Always, the future is now. As the marketing landscape evolves – becoming more and more complex and nuanced – it is beyond time for most companies to hand the reigns over to a specialist. For example, there was a time when we could scoff at the idea of artificial intelligence (such as analytics and chatbots), but that time was up eons ago.
The tools a business used last year to meet success may not work this year. Hopefully you are doing some testing. Metrics are still the only real standard to live and die by. What exactly are you getting for your money? Is it worth the money? If you are asking yourself these questions, you’re not alone. Without testing it’s mostly guesswork.
SEO Testing
Your approach to search engine optimization should be targeted, mailable, and informed. It should have direction. Maybe you are getting the right number of impressions, but your click-through rate is not exactly pretty. Or maybe you are getting the visitors, but your bounce rate or conversion rate is ugly. One option is SEO A/B split testing – which allows you to strip away some of the known variables. Another method is keyword combination testing – which will eventually garner a better bang for your buck.
These methods give you a gauge to read, and there are even applications and plugins out there that will help you to get to that sweet spot. However, the bottom line is that even in these modern times of internet sorcery, you will still have to do the research – or pay someone to do it for you.
PPC Strategy
Pay-per-click may seem like the answer to all of your SEO worries… and it is… sorta. If you have a company whose work is seasonal and localized, you should certainly have a couple of dollars put aside to pump up the jam when your time comes. If your company can potentially make a lot of money off of a single click, then you should definitely be ready to invest in a good PPC strategy.
The oh-so-sad truth is that, like with SEO, you will still have to pay with time and research. You have to know how to use the PPC platforms, what words to pay for, how to optimize your PPC ad layout, etc. etc. etc.
The oh-so-happy truth is that when it comes to SEO and PPC you can kill two birds with one research. To setup PPC you will still want to develop a good set of keywords and phrases, so you may as well handle SEO with the same information. The most optimal strategy is a combination of SEO and PPC. A good example would be keeping your site up to date when it comes to SEO and taking advantage of PPC platforms when it comes to time sensitive promotions.
