Keyword Research Best Practices For New PPC Account Setups
June 18, 2013
For business owners looking to maximize online growth and ROI, the best results I’ve seen come from a consistent, balanced allocation of budget and resources across every major channel of internet marketing — not from betting everything on one. Just as important, each channel then feeds the others. The real advantage of a holistic approach is the data: run these channels together and you get a far more complete picture of who your customers are and how they find you, which you can use to sharpen every part of the effort.
The core channels I’m talking about:
- Pay-per-click advertising — primarily Google and Bing (Microsoft Advertising), plus paid social on Facebook and Instagram and smaller niche platforms, depending on the business model and budget.
- Search engine optimization — a holistic mix of on-site SEO, content development, and earned links from reputable sources.
- On-site content and conversion optimization — landing page structure, action-oriented messaging, and clear calls to action, all built on a solid web design foundation.
- Social media — Facebook, Instagram, X, and YouTube.
Here’s how the data from each of these can be used to cross-optimize the others — and lift the results of the campaign as a whole.
Using PPC data to optimize your SEO
SEO efforts usually focus on a handful of high-value terms. PPC casts a much wider net — your ads can appear for hundreds or thousands of relevant searches immediately, which brings in leads you’d never capture through organic rankings alone, plus a wealth of data specific to your business: exactly which searches lead to conversions and sales.
That conversion data is gold for SEO. It tells you which long-tail and niche terms actually drive results — terms that often have little competition, so you can earn top organic rankings for them relatively quickly and cheaply. In short: if a search term is delivering profitable ROI in paid, it’s a strong candidate to also pursue organically, so you claim even more of that valuable first-page real estate.
Using organic search data to optimize PPC
It runs the other way, too. The search terms in your organic reports surface long-tail keywords (and negatives) you can add to your PPC accounts — I recommend reviewing them monthly to spot new opportunities. And organic conversion data helps you set smarter bids and priorities on those same terms in paid, giving you a fuller read on the true cost-per-lead and ROI of each one.
Using conversion data to optimize landing pages
A/B testing ad copy is a core part of PPC done right — and with enough data, you learn the exact messaging that resonates with your market. That’s a direct clue for your landing pages: the ad headlines and angles that win in paid should be tested in your on-site copy, too.
Because landing page copy isn’t bound by PPC’s character limits, you can expand on the winning message — speaking not just to the keywords people searched, but to the intent behind them. When your ad and the page it leads to both show visitors closely what they’re looking for, conversion rates climb, and so does the ROI of every channel feeding those pages.
Using what you’ve learned to optimize social media
By the time you’ve combined organic search, paid search, and your own experience as a business owner, you know your customers well: what they want, how they find you, and why they choose you over the competition. Put that knowledge to work on social media — lean into what’s already resonating. Expand your FAQ every time a customer raises a new question, create a short “how it works” video to clear up common confusion, and test promotional offers to see what moves the needle. What works in PPC, email, and on-site messaging usually works on social, too.
The bottom line
A holistic approach gives you the most complete picture of who your customers are, what they want, and how they find you — and that breadth of data lets you sharpen every individual channel in turn. PPC, SEO, and web design aren’t separate line items; run well, they compound each other. That’s the difference an experienced internet marketer makes: spotting the niche opportunities and cross-optimizing the whole campaign using data most businesses never connect.
If you’d like that handled by someone who runs all of it under one roof, that’s exactly what our PPC management and SEO services are built for. Reach out and we’ll help you turn scattered efforts into one system that actually compounds.
