When browsing search engine result pages (SERPs) looking for your own sites,
do you ever wonder about the website titles and descriptions shown? Ever
wanted to test different titles in organic search results to see if it
would make a difference? Here is how you can get extra value for
the money spend on paid search and PPC Pay Per Click.
When using online advertising platforms such as
Pay Per Click
networks such as
Google Adwords and
Microsoft AdCenter,
you can do more than simply creating high converting ads with high click-through-rates (CTR).
You can also use them to research which keyword phrases people search often, good websites titles, URLs and much more.
These are all things that can help your organic search engine optimization endeavours as well.
While the competition is obviously very different between the the paid and organic search listings,
the ads gives you a perfect opportunity to test different catch-phrases and call-to-actions in your pay per click (PPC)
campaigns. After finding the
winnner you cann use your test results to search engine optimize (SEO) your page titles.
There are many click through studies on the net how to increase CTR. One such
click through study is ours
which tested the importance of a small difference in the display URL between two ads.
Combined with search data available from Pay Per Click networks, testing ads in e.g. Google Adwords and Microsoft Adcenter
can help you choose good website titles, headers and even page URLs all helping you rank and get high CTR in
organic search results.
The CTR on your ad text can also help you determine areas of interest for potential customers.
Having a high click-through rate on your ads in paid search will most likely decrease your cost per click as
most search engines serving ads appreciate relevant results that gets clicked. This means you have
every incentive to test and test again. Things you can try include:
- Experiment with call to action phrases.
- List benefits and features in different styles.
- Split search keywords into specific adgroups.
- Find related keywords using keyword research tool.
- Optimize landing pages to match keywords you bid on.
All paid search networks are different, and you can not expect the same ads perform equally well on all search engines.
Besides different competition, the quality of keyword search and ad matching can vary. You should monitor
all networks you advertise on and not necessarily be willing to pay the same for all clicks.