Organic search, or pay-per-click (PPC) marketing? That may be the question, but the answer is really a bit of both. Small businesses receive the best benefit from their online marketing strategies by combining the power of both methods to get the desired ranking. Organic search paired with PPC ads gets more eyes, more clicks and more leads. And, although organic search results get 10 times the click-through rate of paid ads, according to the State of Paid Search report by Hanapin Marketing, paid search is geared to grow in 2014. The biggest spending is attributed to Google AdWords, Bing Ads, Display Network and Facebook.
To get the most out of your PPC ads, make sure to use keywords. The keywords in PPC ads are bolded and linked to a dedicated landing page. Once the viewer clicks on the link, make sure you deliver what was promised. If you promise “top solutions,” the solutions had better be prominently displayed. Think about every word in your PPC ad—with only 95 characters to work with, each word is important. You are allowed a 25-character call-to-action headline and two 35-character lines of description. And make sure you have a way to track leads from your PPC ads. You can set up something on the landing page or set up a separate number or extension. Finally, consider adding sitelinks, which add extra message lines and linking options to your PPC ad.