Show guest Bill Leake offers advice on how to combine SEO and paid search campaigns for eCommerce success.

eCommerce paid search campaigns measure success based on sales and revenue rather than leads generated. Most paid search campaigns are lead generation campaigns. This means that paid search strategists must design eCommerce campaigns using different tactics than the typical lead generation campaign.

SEO vs. Paid Search

Many newcomers to search engine marketing wonder whether SEO or paid search is right for them. Typically, it is best to utilize both natural search (SEO) and paid search (PPC) campaigns to expand your exposure on the search engines. However, for eCommerce sites, paid search may be the most efficient option to immediately drive traffic, while natural search campaigns may take time to build SEO ranking. Paid search can also produce valuable data on keywords that can help shape your natural search campaigns. This is important as SEO keywords are long-term time investments.

Here are several simple tactics to consider when optimizing an eCommerce paid search campaign.

Tips for eCommerce websites:

• Have tightly themed ad groups. This helps keep ads consistent and relevant to the webpage.

• Use relevant keywords. Don’t bid on keywords that have nothing to do with your site. Relevant keywords can improve your quality score, which is used to determine how much an advertiser will have to pay to be ranked in a certain position. The higher the quality score, the lower the cost of a higher position.

• Have calls to action in your ad copy. If you have a current promotion, market it in your ad copy.

• Make your ad copy timely. If you have seasonal promotions or products that make good gifts for certain occasions, promote them at those times.

• Send shoppers to the specific product page (landing page) that they searched for rather than the homepage. Ensure consumers can make their purchase on that page without having to click around too much.

• Adjust bids according to the success rates of those keywords. Bid higher amounts for successful keywords and bid less for keywords that convert at lower rates.

• Use negative keywords to eliminate unqualified traffic. If there are words that are related to your industry but will not bring you qualified traffic, set these as negative keywords so you do not pay for clicks that have no chance of turning into a sale.

Bill Leake is the CEO and Founder of Apogee Search, the largest search engine marketing firm in the Southwest, one of the 20 largest in North America and one of the fastest growing companies on the Inc. 500 list. In addition to leading Apogee Search, Bill also serves as the president of the Austin Interactive Marketing Association, and as the chairman of the SEMPO (Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization) committee.

Tags: Apogee Search, eCommerce, Paid Search, Qualified Traffic, Search Engine Optimization, SEO