PPC 101 – Get as Much Real Estate as Possible
A common mistake made amongst beginner PPC Analysts is the assumption that you don’t want to bid on keywords that you already rank well with in Organic Search Results. Nothing could be further from the truth. We need to look at PPC and SEO from a user experience.
For example, let’s pretend I have a site called, ‘Camping Depot.com’. I’ve maintained the site for a year, and it ranks in position #1 on Google, Yahoo and Bing when a user types in the exact search query, ‘Camping Depot’. The amateur PPC analyst will tell you, “Save your money and don’t bid on that term because you’ll be wasting your money on clicks that you could get for free.”
It’s a valid point, and a logical one. The problem is the assumption is that someone searching for ‘Camping Depot’ will only click on the ‘Camping Depot’. That assumption is FALSE!
You can never assume that just because someone types in an Exact Match Keyword that they will click on that result 100% of the time.
So in reality, bidding on the keyword, ‘Camping Depot’ would be incredibly advantageous because I know that the keyword is relevant to my users search query. My Cost Per Conversion will be low, the CTR will be high, the CPC be lower than average and the Conversion rate will be high.
So if you’re not already bidding on search results that you’re listed Organically and have a high conversion rate, you are losing out on potential revenue. It is worth your while to cover up as much of the Search Engine Results Page as possible. Organic Listings, Paid Search Ads, Paid Search Sitelinks, Product Listing Ads, Google Places, etc.
( TL;DR ) Make sure to bid on brand keywords and keywords that rank high in organic listings. If you do this and grab as much real estate on the SERPs you will maximize your revenue.
