For a New Site, PPC First, Then SEO

When setting up a new online business, one should plan on using both Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ads and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). By using PPC first, you can get traffic quickly, test the effectiveness of your website, and get an idea of its conversion rates. Once you are satisfied with the conversion rate of the website, you then reduce marketing costs by working on SEO. Here are the steps that can lead to a Internet marketing strategy that minimizes risk and cost.

First, plan your initial Internet marketing budget and set measurable goals for your campaign. Your budget should be large enough ($1,000 or more for PPC marketing) to get enough traffic to ensure statistically significant results. Your goals should be not only sales, but also inquiries, such as feedback forms, e-mail subscriptions, and phone calls. Your measurable goals should be reasonable; you don't need to make a profit. Expect that you will need to improve your website's effectiveness.

Once your website is ready, put this budget into PPC marketing (Google AdWords or Yahoo! Search Marketing). Once the campaign has finished, it is time to check your results. If you met your goals, congratulations, your site is likely to be successful. If you did not meet your goals, it is time to evaluate your site, your campaign, and your market, make adjustments and try again. Your evaluation could also indicate that a large enough market does not exist for your product or service. In this case your experiment saved you time and money you would have lost trying to make a go of it.

After optimizing your website and PPC campaigns to your satisfaction, it is time to work on SEO. By this time, you will have great data on the effectiveness of popular keywords and be able to concentrate on those for your SEO. As your SEO traffic grows, you can choose to phase out your PPC campaign, or, if you were making money on the campaign, leave it and enjoy the extra profit.

Paul Schmidt is Director of Web Design, iPlenus Solutions (http://www.iplenus.com). iThink, therefore iPlenus.