There are a lot of tools out there to help you with your on-page SEO. We use many of these tools here. But there’s one tool that gives you the ability to see what Google sees in terms of keyword rankings and search volume. That tool is AdWords. AdWords is Google’s main driver of revenue, and in it, they give their buyers insights that Analytics and Webmaster Tools doesn’t offer.
We’ll discuss how to use AdWords to help your on page SEO and your overall SEO strategy. We will take a look at both the paid and “free” things that AdWords offers to help you make the right choices to drive traffic to your website.
Use the Keyword Planner
The Keyword Planner is undoubtedly the best tool out there to help you track the phrases that have the best ROI for your AdWords spend. What people may not use if for, but should, is to help them plan the targeted SEO keywords on their page.
For example, if you’re looking to have a page rank for “graphic t-shirts” you might find that the search volume is through the roof, and the cost-per-click is low. This would tell you that a lot of people search for something and that it takes a lot of clicks to get a sale from this.
In SEO terms it means, this phrase is going to be hard to rank for, and your bounce rate will probably be high. Using the keyword planner you can find terms that might be more applicable to the exact product you’re selling. While the traffic volumes may be lower, the conversion rate would go up as it’s more specific to your searcher’s needs.
Find Your Easy Wins
By finding terms that are the most focused on user intent and directing them to pages that are specific to that intent, the ability to have a lower cost-per-acquisition can get a lot easier. AdWords gives you the ability to quickly try different phrases that match the optimal intent of a potential buyer without having to wait for organic rankings to happen.
Going back to the t-shirt example, if you specialize in humorous t-shirts, instead of using the term “funny graphic t-shirts” using several specific long-tail phrases will help you find which of them lead to the most sales. Once you have that, optimizing your page against the winning term will mean your organic rankings for that will be more effective for sales.
Test Quickly, Test Often
It’s hard to A/B test your SEO strategy quickly. Because of the amount of time that it takes for pages or whole websites to rank, knowing which language will have the best outcome can take months if not years. AdWords give you some unique advantages to do this.
You can have 4 ads in an ad group all pointing to one page or product. You can then have other experiments in terms of the page’s language, the ad text, call-to-action, etc. that can all be running simultaneously. You’ll get your answers to what is working and what is not much faster than through organic means.
The ability to test is crucial to finding your optimal language and on-page SEO strategy. This, in-turn, is crucial to creating your optimal outcome in terms of lead generation and sales.
Conclusion
While the keyword planner is great starting resource, leveraging the full capabilities of Google AdWords is a fast and effective tool to building the best website you can for your goals. Buying AdWords obviously has a cost associated with it, but, so does any marketing activity. The difference between AdWords and other marketing activities is that you can see the results faster, and when you’re done, you can just shut it down.