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Online Paid Search Learning Resources
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About the Author
Garrett French (55 Posts)
Garrett French educates SEO and PR teams on content and engagement-based link building strategies that drive targeted referral traffic and deliver SERP domination. Learn more about him and his services at CitationLabs.com.
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Good post, Garrett. Let me attempt to answer your question.
In the case of SMS, we are very much into paid search. Our company also offers a bid management software and a click fraud monitoring service so we have been working in the PPC field from day one.
One thing I’ve noticed is that people don’t really care too much about PPC. When we first started the magazine, I wanted to include as many articles on PPC as on SEO. The result was a very hostile reaction from our readers who wanted to have more SEO related content.
I think that part of the problem is that people view PPC advertising as a very straightforward process, something that it’s not. SEO is looked upon as this secret knowledge while paid search is considered to be much simpler.
Personally, I don’t like to separate the two. Any good search marketing campaign should include both. Good, targeted content and even descriptive links are as important in PPC as in SEO.
A
People do care about PPC – they’re just not as vocal as a lot of the SEOs. I’d love to see more PPC articles in SMS.
I agree – both have value if used correctly. If something isn’t converting for you, don’t do it. I’m puzzled by all the animosity between the 2 camps – the whole “rocket science” debate is a good illustration. Each tactic has a place in the SEM world.
Al quotes my HighRankings post in the blog post you link to. I do have a blog that focuses mostly on PPC: http://www.beyondthepaid.com.
It’s mostly a hobby for me at this point, but I do try to post regularly.
Melissa
Thanks for stopping by, Melissa. We are working on making the magazine more balanced, in terms of PPC/SEO ratio.
Quality content and links combined with well designed PPC campaign can go a long way for any company.
A
Linkbait? Okay, I’ll admit the title (“Ultimate Guide…” was designed to bait, but the content is more for business owners and webmasters than for my fellow SEOs and bloggers.
I use the term linkbait as the utmost compliment Matt – especially since I’m one linking
Melissa I’ll add you to my reader, and Andry, thanks for your notes!
G
Although I am not the SEO wonk that I am when it comes to PPC, especially AdWords; I appreciate Andrey’s point that it shouldn’t be an either or situation. PPC can function as your rapid response team and advance scout, with the natural search army advancing behind.
Here are blogs from some others that also regularly contribute over in the Google AdWords Groups, along with this humble specialist.
They know their stuff.
Ian Feavearyear
Richard Ball
There are others, and my apologies to them for not getting them in here, maybe I can slip more in later.
-T
Oops!
I’m a strategic wonder, but a technical blunder.
The above botched link goes to Jeremy Chatfield’s blog.
http://blog.merjis.com/
-T
Hi Garrett,
I am a recruiter trying to find SEM Professionals for several positions at MSN. Is there an online community that you reccomend I become a part of?
Vivian.Larsen@kenexa.com
Hi Vivian,
We will have jobs section on our new website launching in mid February. We also have job postings in the magazine. Feel free to get in touch with us to discuss this further.
Andrey
G French,
Thanks for the dig. I’ve always wondered why PPC isnt nearly 1/4 as talked about in the blogosphere as SEO.
Unfortunately, I personally havent found many good PPC blogs outside of Andrew Goodman’s Traffick, but even he tends to wallow on the paid search topic.
I also subscribe to the engines feeds directly to stay on top of when they have announcements and such.
Not overly helpful but I’ll keep you up to speed if i find others.
SEO, PPC, and Analytics (that tracks revenue down to the keyword level) are a must!
SEO and PPC gets you the exposure your site needs, then the analytics lets you know what is working and what isnt.
They are all connected and experts should be used to fully maximize ROI.
PPC tells you what keywords work, and which messages are important. It also makes experimenting with landing page and conversion rates a lot faster. SEO can give volume, at low prices. Analytics are crucial, but none of the paid search vendors offer all the right data, and none of the (big) web analytics package offer useful reports.
Tends to make an article extremely complex, as you use bits of neuro-linguistic programming, marketing communications, micro-economics, game theory, instrumentation, signal analysis, usability, accessibility, 7P’s, buying process, bidding strategies, the generalised second auction, etc.
SEO feels so… simple… by comparison to paid search.
Thanks for the mention, Tom! I only found this posting because I was doing some SEO research on my own reputation management…
Cheers, JeremyC.
Late to the party but thought folks interested in paid search may find some value the paid search resource I recently put together:
http://www.ppcdiscussions.com/2008/03/paid-search-resources-list.html
Enjoy!