The Role of a PPC Expert in Web Development


Have you ever went to your favorite Pizza shop and ordered your most favorite Pizza and that’s not all, you asked for extra topping? Considering the ingredients of Pizza already in there, you ask for extra topping, sauces, and cold drinks may be, to make it more delicious?

That’s how you should develop your next website …

Struggling AdWords accounts are facing two issues; High CPCs and Low Conversion Rates.

For both of these problems, there is one reason; Landing Page

While there are many great resources written by top industry experts to address these issues so I won’t waste your time by twisting that stuff into my own words. Instead, I were trying to find the missing link why there is always a one major reason for the failure of paid campaigns.

 

It happens at the beginning. Majority of the businesses fails at a very early stage during a web development process when they don’t take an input from PPC experts.

I recently written an article about the roles of SEO, PPC and CRO experts but for the role PPC experts, I had quest for more. So, I am explaining here how PPC experts can help you make your website stand out of the crowd, be more conversion friendly and how they can save you from PPC disaster right from the beginning.

Keywords Research

Mostly people look for a SEO experts if they need to get keywords research done for their business. While SEOs are good at it but keyword research is task that should be assign to PPC experts. Why? Because they are the people who knows some real time stuff about keywords.

  • Misunderstanding the PPC

SEO experts are limited to keyword research tools and they are heavily focused on targeted keywords and their rankings. On the other hand, PPC experts see some real time search queries entered by the users into search engines before they land on the business website.

With the help of this data, they understand the market much better than anyone else, they learn which keywords have highest probability of conversion, what other services are they looking for along with the offers on the website, what type of keywords don’t convert.

Are they price conscious or looking for the quality at any cost? Are they comfortable contacting via email or are they directly want to talk to you on phone? What stops them to convert on your website? Are there any technical issues in your website?

So this is the misconception about PPC that you need to run paid campaigns for the sole purpose of getting immediate results. This is quite true but not the only reason you should run PPC, it can help with many other important factors as well like I mentioned above.

  • Purpose of PPC

Most of the businesses believe that the purpose of PPC is getting immediate conversions by paying to search engines but it’s not a long term solution and it’s costly. Well, that’s quite true but conversions are not the only reason you should run a paid campaign. Allocated budget should be set for PPC for first few weeks to study visitors’ behavior and website functionalities.

  • Different Between SEO & PPC Approach

Let me give you a real time example…

Let suppose a car dealer in New York wants to develop a website for his Toyota Showroom. He goes to a web developer and makes a deal with him. Developer asks for business details and owner provide him models he sell, colors, prices, finance options and stuff like that. Developer then look at other websites or may involve web designer.

SEO expert will have a look at details from a different angle. He will pick any Toyota model to start his own keyword research. Let’s say Toyota Camry. After doing extensive research on keywords, SEO experts will come up with keywords like this… for example:

Toyota Camry for sale

Used Toyota Camry in New York

Buy Toyota Camry in NY

There is nothing wrong with these keywords and they are good to targeted and rank for. I am talking about the junior to mid-level SEO approach. Many great SEO experts will do thing entirely differently.

 PPC experts look at the things from multiple angles because they always have paid campaigns in their minds so even during the web development process they’ll be more focused toward future PPC campaigns and because they already have idea of what type of search queries people enter into Google so they’ll go deeper to find the hidden potential to create landing pages and improve keywords quality score.

PPC experts will gather the data in the following way…

Seed Keyword: Toyota Camry

Fuel Type: Diesel, Gasoline & Hybrid

Version: LE, XLE, XSE, SE

Body Style: Sedan, Wagon, Liftback, Coupe

Transmission: Manual, Automatic

Condition: New, Used

Years: 1982 – present

Colors: Red, Black, White, Silver, blue etc.

Codes: V10, V20, V30, V40, V50, XV10, XV20, XV30, XV40, XV50

Engine Size: 1.8, 2.0, 2.5 & 3.5

Long Tail Keywords

General understanding of long tail keywords is; Long Tail Keywords are three and four words keywords with less competition and very specific to the industry. This definition forces majority of the experts not to think beyond it. While, in my point of view these are not actual long tail keyword you can easily find through any keyword research tool.

According to studies published by Moz, more than 70% + of total search queries are long tail that no one can even “comprehend”. So, how do we find them by using tools if no one can even comprehend?

So the question arises here. Where can we find those actual “Long Tail Keywords”?

The answer is very simple; by running PPC campaigns

  • Paid Tail Keywords

 Let’s call them “Paid Tail Keywords” because we can get hold of them only if we spend money on PPC. I am sure PPC experts have already got my point but if you are still wondering how PPC can provide us with these paid tail keywords data then let me explain this to you. PPC platforms like AdWords provide data for actual search term entered by the visitors to land your website by clicking your ad.

These keywords are actually paid tail keywords and no keyword research tool provides data about them.

Here is how the paid tail keywords looks like in AdWords interface…

Here comes the problem, your landing pages weren’t ready for these types of visitors looking very specifically for products or services you are selling [If you are selling].

Coming back to the Toyota Camry research, if the long tail keywords are something like this

Toyota Camry for sale

Used Toyota Camry in New York

New Toyota Camry in NY

So what do we do with this data?

Seed Keyword: Toyota Camry

Fuel Type: Diesel, Gasoline & Hybrid

Version: LE, XLE, XSE, SE

Body Style: Sedan, Wagon, Liftback, Coupe

Transmission: Manual, Automatic

Condition: New, Used

Years: 1982 – present

Colors: Red, Black, White, Silver, blue etc.

Codes: V10, V20, V30, V40, V50, XV10, XV20, XV30, XV40, XV50

Engine Size: 1.8, 2.0, 2.5 & 3.5

We find “Paid Tail Keywords”!

Paid tail keywords will be a combination of any or all of the words above one word from each category mostly. They will look something like this…for example,

  • Toyotal camry xle diesel 2010 for sale in new York
  • 2.0 camry xv40 used
  • Black camry sedan hybrid 3.5 new

So, during the web development process, PPC experts can give their valuable input to develop more specific landing pages which will of course rank higher in SERPs, improve keywords quality score and significantly decrease your cost/conversion.

Landing Pages

Next important factor where PPC experts can help is landing page designing and development. Well, this is more of a CRO’s job but good PPC experts are good in CRO as well and they can give a good start to the business while CRO can take a lead from there. Also, before any experimentations, PPC experts can suggest better headlines, content and stuff like that based on their experience about reading user’s search terms.

Here is an example of non-PPC and PCC approach

I searched for “high risk home insurance” and found the following results…

First result is clear example of SEO focused website. Created one landing page for “Home Insurance” theme and trying to rank for all other relevant keywords.

 

Mobile view of same SEO focused website, Isn’t a disaster in this mobile world where 50% of traffic is already on mobile? And this site is still ranking on first page, may be not on first position from US IP but most probably somewhere on page first.

Third result in the SERP is a clear example of PPC oriented website, have a specific landing page for “High Risk Home Insurance” and a clear Call to Action. After landing on this page, the first impression I received that they are running PPC 🙂

I did a little research on SpyFu to find out and yes they are.

On a lighter note, by the way, I have never seen so many question marks in any ad yet 🙂

Did you notice the difference between the two? One is trying to rank organically in search engines [poor landing page] and another is running paid campaigns [good landing page]. Well, this is not a principle, I am just saying if they had good PPC expert with them even for a while, their website will look entirely different. Majority of the business are making this same mistake.

Key Takeaways

 These are the benefits if PPC expert has given input during web development…

  • A PPC expert is an essential part of web development process
  • PPC experts can help with advanced keyword research
  • PPC experts can help in finding Paid Tail Keywords
  • PPC experts can suggest multiple conversion actions on your website
  • PPC experts can suggest better titles, descriptions, headings, and content
  • Minimal chances to fail in your online marketing efforts
  • Lowest cost/conversion right from the beginning
  • Minimum website errors and usability issues

That’s all from me, now it’s your turn to let me know your thoughts in the comments section.

Umer Mahasin
 

Umer Mahasin is a founder of Digitalmization He has spent over 6 years in digital marketing as a SEO and PPC strategist. He loves to make businesses successful online while keeping their budget constraints in mind. Follow him on Twitter