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Build Great Backlinks has posted a new item, 'Use Paid Promotion to Refine Your
SEO and Make Your Visitors More Valuable'

<p>Posted by <a
href=\http://moz.com/community/users/503984\>shannonskinner</a/pp>
I recently found myself trying to give a client a rough estimate of the value
organic traffic brought them. In the process of doing so, I stumbled upon the
world of paid promotion. Considering Rand's Whiteboard Friday about
<a href=http://moz.com/blog/surviving-the-seo-slog-whiteboard-friday
target=_blank>surviving the SEO slog</a>, paid promotion is important
to tactics that we know do provide immediate tangible value, and I wondered if
there was potential for it to be a part of a wider online marketing strategy
that could also enhance the work of SEO. I want to open up that world a bit and
discuss what I discovered: how paid promotion can complement organic
search.</pp>
First, let me define what I mean by paid promotion. This might include typical
paid search, but also display ads, remarketing, and paid ads on platforms such
as Facebook and Twitter. Paid promotion comes in many forms, including sponsored
images, sponsored stories, and everything else in the following image
(tap/click to enlarge):</pp>
<a
href=http://d2v4zi8pl64nxt.cloudfront.net/using-paid-promotion-to-enhance-seo/5341c0dd52b114.84262548.png
target=_blankimg
src=http://d2v4zi8pl64nxt.cloudfront.net/using-paid-promotion-to-enhance-seo/5341c0dd52b114.84262548.png/a/pp
style=text-align: center;>
<em>
Image source: <a
href=http://d2v4zi8pl64nxt.cloudfront.net/using-paid-promotion-to-enhance-seo/5341c0dd52b114.84262548.png
target=_blank>http://imgur.com/z059ueV.png</a/em/pp>
Recently, there's been lots of discussion of the
<a
href=http://social.ogilvy.com/facebook-zero-considering-life-after-the-demise-of-organic-reach/
target=_blank>decreasing organic reach on Facebook</a>. It seems that
there's been a <a href=http://moz.com/blog/facebook-algorithm-change
target=_blank>shift in the Facebook algorithm</a>—certain posts have
seen a decrease, others an increase in organic reach. Pages with over 500,000
likes are seeing a particularly massive decrease in organic reach, perhaps
in an effort to encourage them to pay for ads. Additionally, MarketingLand
recently reported that <a
href=http://marketingland.com/pinterest-advertisers-start-paying-promoted-pins-early-next-month-report-77645
target=_blank>Pinterest will be adding promoted pins</a>.</pp>
The reality is, paid promotion has a lot to offer online marketing, and can
really complement some of what you might be doing with search marketing and
optimization. Paid promotion offers a way to test things out to make sure
they're worth putting the effort and resources into, as well as add more punch
to the impact that search is already making for a site. Paid promotion offers
quick results you can control, making it a great complement to your overall
marketing strategy.</ph2>
<strong>Test things out: Use Facebook and AdWords to test your
ideas</strong/h2p>
Optimizing for search and creating interesting content that will get shared
requires a lot of investment. Paid promotion can be used to test recommendations
and creative ideas out before investing a lot of time, energy, and resources
into making them happen. It can also be used after content has been
made to ensure you're using optimal headlines. Upworthy provided a really
fantastic deck for how to make things go viral, and it included the
recommendation of using Facebook as a means to test headlines.</p>
<div style=text-align:center;>
<iframe src=http://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/17333198
width=427 height=356 frameborder=0 marginwidth=0 marginheight=0 scrolling=no
style=border:1px solid #CCC; border-width:1px 1px 0; margin-bottom:5px;
max-width: 100%; display:inline-block; allowfullscreen=>
</iframe>
</divdiv style=margin-bottom: 5px; text-align: center;>
<strong> <a
href=https://www.slideshare.net/Upworthy/the-sweet-science-of-virality title=The
Sweet Science Of Virality target=_blank>The Sweet Science Of
Virality</a> </strong> from <stronga
href=http://www.slideshare.net/Upworthy
target=_blank>Upworthy</a/strong>
</divp>
Titles can be the difference, according to
<a
href=http://www.upworthy.com/you-will-not-believe-how-easy-it-is-to-make-something-go-viral
target=_blank>Upworthy</a>, between one million views and 17 million
views. That's a pretty big impact. I particularly love this deck because
they use examples to illustrate how you really can't predict which titles
will work with people, making it critical to test. And then test some
more. </pp>
I've used Facebook ads to estimate interest in projects. Is the
click-through rate (CTR) good enough to actually build out a
project? If not, it's better to go back to the drawing board and make sure
you'll actually have an audience. For a little more depth, <a
href=http://fbppc.com/how-to/construct-better-headlines-with-facebook-ad-tests/
target=_blank>this post</a> also explains how to do what Upworthy did
to optimize their headlines.</pp>You can set up an ad campaign
relatively cheaply—you can purchase over 200,000 unique impressions for around
$100 on Facebook (side ads, not feed ads, which are a bit more expensive). From
there, you can calculate whether there is a statistically significant
difference in the CTRs of each of your variances (if you need a statistics
refresher, you can easily use <a
href=http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/downloads/ab_testing_significance_calculator.xls
target=_blank>this fantastic spreadsheet</a> from <a
href=http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/split-testing-blog/ab-testing-significance-calculator-spreadsheet-in-excel/
target=_blank>Visual Website Optimizer</a>).</pp style=text-align:
center;>
<a
href=http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/downloads/ab_testing_significance_calculator.xls
target=_blankimg
src=http://d1avok0lzls2w.cloudfront.net/uploads/blog/5341f37dcfa941.56166986.jpg/a/pp
style=text-align: center;>
<em>Image Source: <a
href=http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/split-testing-blog/ab-testing-significance-calculator-spreadsheet-in-excel/
target=_blank>Visual Website Optimizer</a/em/pp>
It can be used for determining the significance of any test by simply having
two sets of conversion statistics—in this case, for Visitors, you'd enter the
number of impressions & for Conversions you'd enter the number of clicks. The
spreadsheet provides a YES or NO about whether the difference between the two
sets of numbers is significant with 90, 95 or 99% confidence, making the math
super easy. If the difference between your tests isn't significant, you'll
have to run them again with a larger sample, or they may be equivalently
impactful, so you could use another version to test again.</pp>
Facebook has the advantage of segmentation—whatever population you want to
target can be targeted—cat lovers, people who like a particular musical
artist, play tennis or live in a small town, but aren't from that location. Any
segmentation you can imagine, you can target.</pp>
To test for free, you can use Upworthy's trick of posting to specific cities
with different headlines, but considering the recent decrease in organic reach,
that may not yield the kind of results you're looking for. </pp>
AdWords can also be useful to
<a href=http://blogs.hbr.org/2011/10/the-fastest-cheapest-best-way/
target=_blank>test out titles and keywords to target</a>, as well as
<a
href=http://hallmancommunications.com/how-to-test-demand-for-your-new-product-using-google-adwords/
target=_blank>viability of new products</a>. Each of these tests will
vary in price greatly depending upon the type of keywords you're targeting as
well as the number of clicks you end up needing to get statistically significant
results (same situation as with Facebook). Unfortunately, you won't know exactly
what you need until you've got it, but if you can give yourself around $500 of
budget, to test a few headlines, you may well be able to get some quality
data. </pp>
Either using Facebook or AdWords to test out headlines means you need something
to click to. I've found great success with <a href=http://launchrock.co/
target=_blank>LaunchRock</a>—it's super easy to set up and either use
their server or your own to point visitors to. The added bonus is that you can
easily collect contact information, generating leads while you're testing things
out. </pp>
AdWords can also be a great
<a
href=http://moz.com/blog/using-adwords-data-for-seo-unlocking-the-ultimate-keyword-research-treasure-trove-arrrgh
target=_blank>source of keyword data</a>, in part because you can see
what the conversion rates are for different keywords for your site. You could
use a similar technique for Twitter, or really any other advertising platform.
But these are some of the most commonly used and advertised on, and relatively
easy to launch advertising for.</pp>
The advantage for SEO of testing in this way is that you can then select which
keywords to target and titles to use not just based on volume of queries,
but also by how conversion rates for your site are for each query. Getting
500,000 new visitors where only 5,000 turn into new clients is not as fantastic
as getting 100,000 new visitors where 10,000 of them turn into new clients. The
same is true, of course, for amount of revenue. Not all traffic is equal, and
paid search can help SEO determine which traffic should be pursued, and which
titles to use to do so. </ph2>
<strong>Pack more punch: Use remarketing to convert more visitors
into customers</strong/h2p>
It's great to get traffic to your site. It's even better for traffic to
generate revenue. Remarketing is basically targeting previous visitors to
encourage them to behave in the way you'd like—buying your product, signing up
for your email list, etc. It is
<a
href=http://www.comscore.com/Insights/Press_Releases/2010/9/comScore_Study_with_ValueClick_Media_Shows_Ad_Retargeting_Generates_Strongest_Lift_Compared_to_Other_Targeting_Strategies
target=_blank>extremely effective (one study says an incredible 1,046%
increase in trademark lift!)</a>. Remarketing is effective because,
as AJ Kohn at Blind Five Year Old <a
href=http://www.blindfiveyearold.com/seo-remarketing
target=_blank>explains</a>, you are marketing to people who already
came to your site. Larry Kim provided an excellent <a
href=http://moz.com/blog/remarketing-how-to-make-your-content-marketing-seo-up-to-7x-more-awesome
target=_blank>case study on using remarketing to enhance the impact of
SEO</a> on Moz last fall. It's a fantastic example of how powerful
remarketing can be for search, because it is a way to build brand.</pp>
There are some simple ways to do remarketing—remind a visitor to a
particular product that they were looking at that exact product—but there are
also some other, more inventive ways to use remarketing. Get them to join your
mailing list. Offer a discount if they come back and buy. The important thing,
as Larry says in his post, is to:</pul>

<li>Provide them a <strong>call to action </strong>(sign up
for our mailing list!)</li>
<li>Include branding or images that will improve brand
recall</li/ul>
<div style=text-align:center;>
<img
src=http://d1avok0lzls2w.cloudfront.net/uploads/blog/5341f661f15c35.02231055.jpg>
</divdiv style=text-align:center;>
<em>Image Source: <a
href=http://blog.reachlocal.com/139039/2011/06/01/how-to-create-an-engaging-remarketing-ad-for-your-local-business.html
target=_blank>ReachLocal</a/embr>
</divp>
Always do some A/B testing with your remarketing campaigns to ensure you're
using the optimal ads. If your ad is in your brand voice, and has a message that
fits with your brand, you will be getting value out of the ads into the future,
because your ads will not only be leading to immediate action off of your call
to action, but also building up the recall of your brand.</pp>
<a
href=https://blog.twitter.com/2013/nielsen-brand-effect-for-twitter-how-promoted-tweets-impact-brand-metrics
target=_blank>Twitter conducted a study</a> about the impact of
impressions on brand favorability and brand lift, as well as purchase intent.
While this information is clearly aimed at encouraging promoted tweets, and
should thus taken with a grain of salt, psychology has firmly demonstrated that
familiarity breeds likability. If you want people to like your brand, they
should be familiar with it. And impressions are one way to enhance
familiarity.</pp>
As with testing out headlines and keywords that convert, remarketing can
optimize value of the visitors search brings to a site. Reaching out to
people who have visited the site, and thus clearly shown that they are
interested at some level in what you're offering can turn visitors into
conversions, either as customers today, or leads to nurture. </pp>
What do you think—when have you seen paid promotion complement SEO? Do you
think it should be a completely distinct strategy? Let me know in the comments
below!</pbr /pa href=http://moz.com/moztop10>Sign up for The Moz Top
10</a>, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of
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