Some PPC features

• Fast results – can normally start to see results within hours (or even minutes) of activating a campaign
• Only pay when a user clicks
• Reasonably easy to focus on the Keywords you want
• Don’t necessarily have to change your web site
• Great Tracking capabilities (so that it is easy to monitor, measure, adjust and improve)
• You get to define where users go (you define the website landing page)
• Can target distinct regions/localities for your ad to be displayed
• Achieve first page visibility quickly and easily (but not always cheaply)

PPC can be an effective way to get exposure for a site (particularly a new site). However once you stop paying, your ads stop showing, and your traffic volumes drop – there may be few long term benefits. PPC is comparatively quick and easy to setup – but keep in mind that it is also easy for your competition – if they have bigger budgets, they could ultimately win.

Provided that you recognize how much a click is worth, and are certain that the rewards outweigh the expense, PPC can be highly effective. You would not for instance care if it costs you $2,000 (or more) a day provided that it generates $5,000.

PPC is among the few ways a fresh site can get found in the search engine results and start to build traffic (and sales revenue) while the long term Seo methods kick in. The data generated from a PPC Campaign (such as which keywords are converting) can also be an extremely useful source of information for an SEO campaign.

Search engine optimisation Advantages

Below are some of the positive aspects of Search engine optimization:

• Visitors from Organic Search are Totally free
• The rankings a website achieves through SEO can continue for a very long time after the work has been done
• On-page improvements (that are most likely necessary for SEO) can help improve conversions along with traffic
• Commonly more searchers click the natural search results (88%) versus the pay per click ads (12%), so you may well get a good deal more traffic from Organic results.
• Users typically feel Organic Search Results have a higher “trust” level

Of course SEO is not free – it requires effort and investment, frequently over a long period. In some demanding niches it can be extremely hard (or even impossible) to attain page 1 rankings, but in most niches it is possible to comparatively easily achieve respectable rankings and traffic. In any case, it’s the user that should be at the heart of any SEO strategies. Almots anything you do to improve the user experience may well increase your rankings and conversion rates (and ultimately increase sales/enquiries)

Both PPC and SEO have their benefits and drawbacks and depending on your specific goals, either (or even both) could be best for your needs.

Google claim that the purpose of Google Instant is to deliver users with faster, dynamic results and provide further predictive suggestion (similar to Google Suggest) to make it easier for users to find what they are looking for.

At time of posting it hasn’t yet made its way to www.google.com.au, but has been implemented on Google.com and Google.co.uk and is expected to arrive in Australia very soon.  At the moment Google Instant only works under a limited subset of browesr (mostly the latest versions), and will also not shpow up if you have a low bandwidth internet connection.

So far there does not appear to have been any change to actual rankings – the results from both natural and paid search do not appear to have changed, but it’s going to be interesting to see how Google Instant may impact Search Engine Optimisation and Paid Search strategies.

This release has generated the usual (and predictable) – “OMG – It’s the end of SEO” statements, but of course it isn’t.  As long as people rely on search for finding the information they need on the internet, there will always be a need for improving rankings and online visablilty.

In response to the question ““Will Google Instant change search engine optimization?” Matt Cutts has said :

“I think over time it might. The search results will remain the same for a query, but it’s possible that people will learn to search differently over time”

It appears likely that Google Instant will change users search behavior, and this may have an indirect impact on how a site should be optimised.  Whilst traditional SEO strategies are unlikley to change overnight, Google Instant may very well introduce other opportunities for website owners to have their site found – and is quite likely to result in new SEO strategies and techniques.

Search Engine Land have published a great article called Google Instant Search: The Complete User’s Guide, which talks about how Google Instant works and their view of how Google Instant may impact rankings.

1. Go out and register a bunch of “keyword-rich” domain names. Duplicate the content from your main domain to each of these and link them all back to the main domain to “help” the main site’s popularity.  Make sure that you “Forget” to tell your SEO that you’ve done this.

Not only will this not help, but it may prevent even your main domain from being displayed in some search engines. While the search engines don’t actually penalise duplicate content, they will either ignore or eventually filter out the duplicates – and they might just decide that your primary domain pages are the duplicate ones!

If you haven’t yet done anything like this, but you’re thinking it might be a good idea, save your money.  You’re much better off spending your time effort and money on optimising your actual site rather than a half hearted effort on lots of sites.

2. Hire a web designer who knows nothing about SEO to produce a site for you. Bring the SEO in at the end of the process, after the site is already completed. Forbid your SEO from making any changes to the on-page display of your site.

Virtually any existing site, no matter how search-friendly it is, will need some changes. If your site isn’t search-friendly already, the changes may be significant indeed.

If your SEO tells you that you don’t need to make any changes to your site and everything can be handled “behind the scenes,” then you should think about getting yourself a new SEO! They’re either clueless, or they’re planning to use sneaky tactics that can eventually get you in trouble with the search engines (or both!). Solid, long-term results come from hard work, not trickery.

Of course, the best tactic is to bring your SEO and your designer together from the start, so your site will be search-friendly from the get-go.

3. Neglect to tell your SEO about previous attempts at optimisation, particularly if they involved questionable practices. After all, there’s no sense in dredging up ancient history.

If your previous SEO efforts managed to get your site penalised or banned, your present SEO needs to know this. There are things that can be done to try to rectify the situation, but those things won’t be done if your SEO doesn’t know they need doing.

Even if the tactics used haven’t yet caused any actual penalties for you, it’s important to let your new SEO know what went before, and what might still be lurking about in dark corners of the Web. This will help your new SEO get things cleaned up and avoid any unpleasant surprises on down the road.

4. Start calling your SEO approximately two days after they’ve first started work on your site, asking when you’re going to see your rankings go up for your favourite key phrase. Call back at approximately two or three day intervals from then on out until you rank number one for your chosen phrase, or the SEO jumps off a bridge, whichever comes first.

Optimization takes time to reach full effect. For instance, it may take up to a year before a new site will rank well on Google for competitive key phrases. Even for less competitive phrases, you could potentially be looking at a period of several months before your site’s natural rankings settle in. In the meantime, Pay-Per-Click advertising (PPC) can get your site on the first page even for highly competitive terms, as long as you’re willing to pay the cost per click.

5. Focus all your energies on a single phrase. No matter how much your SEO tries to convince you to diversify, or tells you this phrase isn’t going to be all that useful to you, insist on single-minded concentration on this one phrase. After all, your competition’s site ranks at number one for this phrase, and you have to beat them to get bragging rights.

Depending on its size, a well-optimised site should focus on dozens to hundreds of key phrases. There is simply no reason to limit yourself to one, or even a small handful of phrases. If your site doesn’t have enough pages to support all the useful key phrases recommended by your SEO, consider adding additional pages of content rather than shortening the list of targeted phrases.

Follow your SEO’s recommendations about which phrases should get priority. A good SEO will start any project by doing a detailed key phrase analysis to determine which words and phrases are most likely to be used by people who are searching for the kind of stuff you offer. There’s no point in ranking highly for phrases that no one ever uses for an actual search.

Don’t let your ego or vanity limit the potential of your site to rank well for multiple, valuable terms.

6. Check your rankings on a daily basis. Call your SEO to report (and, if needed, complain) about every fluctuation.

It’s a fact of life: rankings vary on a daily basis – sometimes an hourly or even minute-by-minute basis. Checking your rankings daily, or even more often, is simply a waste of time.

Sure, number one rankings are cool for bragging rights, but rankings alone don’t put food on the table.

The true measure of the success of an optimization campaign should not be rankings, or even traffic. It should be conversions – that is, how many people end up doing whatever it is you want your site visitors to do. (Buy your product, subscribe to your membership area, sign up for your newsletter, whatever.)

A good SEO will focus on this metric and will try to help you do the same.

Well, there you have it. Six easy ways to drive any good SEO insane. Now, of course, if you’d rather have a profitable web site, you might want to consider not doing any of these things. The choice is yours.

If you have inadvertently (or intentionally) used some “optimisation” techniques on your website that are outside the Search Engine Guidelines, there is a real chance that your site may be penalised – and this could result in significant drops in your rankings, or your pages may be dropped from search results completely.

If you carry out regular rank reporting on your site, this rankings drop should show up fairly quickly. But a significant drop in the number of visitors to your site – and ultimately, a drop in inquiries or sales – are all symptoms of search penalties being applied.

If you have your site listed with Google Webmaster Tools they may (but will not always) notify that there is an issue with your site. A Webmaster tools notification will also usually give yiou an indication on what the problem is.

It is very important that you do something about it as soon you become aware of an issue. The longer you delay – the more significant the impact is likely to be on your site and online business.

What Can I do?

The first step is to identify why your site was penalised in the first place, and this is not always easy. If Google has indicated an issue in Webmaster Tools – they are usually pretty good at explaining what the problem is. The issue may not necessarily be related to recent changes to your site, it could actually be caused as a result of changes applied quite some time ago, – and only just discovered by the search engines – or as a result of a recent change in the Search Engine Ranking algorithms.

If you are not sure what the problem is – consulting the relevant Search Engine Guidelines is a good place to start. Whilst these guidelines don’t necessarily list everything that could be penalised – they do cover many of the most common issues.

Once you’ve identified the problem – fix it, update your site – and submit a reinclusion request.

What is a Reinclusion request – and how do I submit one?

These days, (according to Matt Cutts) Google likes to refer to a reinclusion request, as a “reconsideration request”. A reinclusion request asks Google to review your site and consider removing any potential spam penalty.

The official Google documentation on how to file a reconsideration request is here: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35843.

When submitting a request, Google wants to know two things:

1. that any spam on the site is gone or fixed, and
2. that it’s not going to happen again.

Matt Cutts suggests giving a short explanation of what you think happened: what actions may have led to any penalties and what corrective action that you’ve taken to prevent any spam in the future.  The video (below) created by the Google Search Quality team provides some good tips on requesting reconsideration.

How Long will it take ?

Once you have identified the problem, fixed it, and submitted your reinclusion request to Google, how will it take before your site starts to show up in the listings again, and will it achieve the same rankings as it did before?

That depends largely on when Google reviews the request, and on the type of spam penalty that has been applied. In our experience though Google is usually very responsive to reinclusion requests – and your site could start appearing again within days, although don’t’ be surprised if you do not see any changes for 2-3 weeks. If your site has not reappeared within 3-4 weeks, you should take a closer look at the webmaster guidelines, and seek advice from a reputable and professional SEO agency.