Did you know that Google handles about 5.6 billion search queries per day?
If you want your accounting company to get more exposure, it’s essential to get as many visitors to your site as possible.
It helps a lot to have a high Google page rank for major accounting firm and CPA terms, but a pay-per-click campaign for accountants could be just what you need to set your company apart.
PPC campaigns are helpful for the accounting Firms profession for many reasons:
With Pay per click (PPC) advertising, your company’s name will appear above most results on search engine. This helps more potential clients find your business.
If your company doesn’t rank for a critical accounting keyword, you can design an ad that appears when the user types that word. Your company name and site will always get prominence above your competition with PPC ads.
With A successful PPC campaign, you have a lot of control. It’s possible to make campaign changes immediately.
Just choose the keywords you want to focus on, set how much you are spending, and write the ad.
PPC allows you to track people that click your accounting Firms or CPA website. With that data, you know which Google ads work and which don’t. You also learn which pages get the most visitors and the most effective keywords.
All of this information lets you tweak your ads for the most effectiveness over the long term.
Before setting up a PPC campaign, please review these best practices to get the most bang for your buck.
Your Pay per click (PPC) campaign should be regularly updated to ensure they are focused on the right keywords and prospects. That means you or your PPC manager need to look for the latest keyword opportunities to put into the campaign.
You can rely on many ways to find the latest keywords. One simple way is to review Google search results in your niche and look for keywords that you didn’t include in your digital marketing campaign.
Another way is using the Keyword Planner that is included in your account. This is a free tool loaded with ways to find the best and most competitive keywords. You also can review what the average cost per click is for each word. Then you can forecast what you will probably spend and the marketing budget you need.
This is essential for your accounting PPC campaign. Conversion tracking lets you check how many visitors have come to your site from the campaign. This could be through a website form, chat, or phone call.
You also can use micro-conversion that lets you see smaller types of engagement, such as signing up for the e-newsletter or downloading a white paper.
When you set up conversion tracking, you can watch how many contacts or sales have come from a period of time compared to the costs. You also will know which keywords, ads, and landing pages are the best performers. This allows you to fine-tune your paid search campaigns for the most cost-effective results.
It’s easy to get bogged down in your own company and campaign, but don’t forget to check what your competitors are up to. There are reports and tools within Google Ads that help you keep up with competitors.
Some of these tools are free, but you also can pay third parties to analyze your competition. A popular paid tool is Spyfu which shows the keywords your competitors pay for. Another good one is SERanking. Both offer a good look at what other marketers are paying every month for your keywords.
For every accounting ad group, you have in Google Ads, it’s advised to have two or three advertisements so you can test various promotions and variations. Google/search engines have several ad types you can choose from.
Google defaults to showing the best-performing ads the most. So you should watch your ads and continue running tests. Any ad that isn’t performing well should be analyzed and improved for the best digital marketing spend.
It might seem too obvious, but it’s surprising how many accounting firm target areas that don’t matter to their business. After all, if your office is in Seattle, you may not get a lot of traction running ads in Miami. Sure, some clients can be remote, but many people don’t want to use an accountant that isn’t in their town.
You can easily set up location targeting in your Google Ad account by clicking Settings, Locations, and City/Region/Zip Code.
The recommendations page in your Google account offers many helpful opportunities to improve your campaign. Recommendations are created automatically by Google’s algorithm when it sees chances to make your campaign better.
There are lots of recommendations on this page that can help your accounting PPC campaign. Some include dynamic search as, targeting and keywords, responsive search ads, and more.
You also will notice an optimization score. This is Google’s estimate of how well your account is performing. Applying their recommendations helps the campaign improve.
The list of keywords for accountants is often shorter than for other PPC ads advertisers. This means there are fewer search variations even when your campaign targets several geographic locations.
That said, you still might dig up a few long tail keywords that work well for your accounting business.
It’s often worthwhile to use board match keyword versions of other keywords and match types. Experts say it’s ideal to begin with phrase and exact match keywords. Then, put in broad match after a few weeks or months when you want more clicks.
Don’t neglect negative keywords, either. For accountants, this can include keywords that are related to people searching for jobs, careers, resumes, etc.
PPC is one of the most powerful and cost-efficient ways for accountants to grow their brand and practice. Use these tips and your accounting firm will be well ahead of the competition.
If you manage a pay-per-click (PPC) account, you may always search for ‘the best way’ to increase ad performance.
Many different strategies work for various companies, but one surefire way to get better PPC performance is to bid on your branded keywords.
At first glance, this sounds like a waste.
Why should you run ads on branded keywords that already give you a high organic Google/search engines listing?
We’re glad you asked because the reasons we offer in this article should convince you that spending money on branded keywords offers excellent PPC ROI.
Want the best strategy to control the message of your own brand Or brand keywords? Bid on it! The landing page and advertising copy you want prospects to go to when they look for your brand name can be highly controlled with pay-per-click advertising.
If you don’t use branded clicks and the prospect puts your company name in search, they usually go to the home page/search engine results page. That’s fine but it probably isn’t the page that is most likely to make them take action.
If you can control the message the prospect sees – such as highlighting your most popular product – it’s more likely they will take the action you want.
Say your company sells regulatory webinars and it’s currently offering a discount on an annual pass. When a prospect looks for your company name, you need to be sure they are aware of the discount in the advertisement copy.
When they click the ad, they will be sent to the landing page to learn everything about the yearly discount, which will include a call to action to get them to purchase.
Let’s say you decide to use a branded keyword campaign and it’s doing very well. That’s awesome and it comes with another benefit: It enhances your account’s/social media accounts Quality score.
Having a branded keyword part of your PPC campaigns means the account gets a better Quality Score, and having a higher grade is very important for search placement.
If you own a home or investment properties, you know their location is often more important than anything. Even if the home is really attractive, you could have problems if the neighborhood is so-so.
In a similar vein, using track-branded keywords helps you to own as many of the SERPs as possible. You want to do so with your regular Branded keywords ads, but it’s very difficult to show up in paid search ads and high organically for every Branded keyword.
Spending on branded keywords gives you a bigger boost. Your site will be high in the rankings organically. And, the branded ad also will appear.
A visitor may click either one, but it always helps to occupy more SERP real estate. The more of that space you occupy, the more likely the customer will wind up on your site.
Does it seem like your partners and affiliates present your brand and products well? Great! But don’t take that to mean you should never bid on your brand. The opposite is true, actually.
Working with partners and affiliates is worthwhile; it increases your market reach and potential revenues. But it’s understandable that you probably prefer to sell to your prospects directly.
When you bid on branded keywords, this makes sure the ad shows alongside ads that your partners and affiliates placed.
If you see bidding on your company brand by competitors, then you really need to start doing it.
Using branded keywords means raising your CTR and Quality Score. After all, branded keywords are highly relevant to your landing pages and ads.
Once you lock in that higher Quality Score, you get a lower CPC, too! Branded searches will automatically put branded ads at the top of search results.
No one can guarantee that getting branded clicks to your site is cheaper than others. But many in the industry say this is often true.
Also, the price for non-branded Keyword and branded keywords can be really different. There are some companies that pay up to $20 per click for non-branded keyword but only $2 for branded keywords!
You can track organic searches with a search console, but the functionality is limited. With a paid search/digital marketing campaign and branded keywords, you will gain valuable information about your customers.
You’ll collect branded keyword data from ad licks but you can take advantage of ad extensions to get even more insights and data.
Conversion tracking with a PPC ads campaign also lets you collect information on demographics, and you can find out the days and times you get the most site Organic traffic. With this critical data, you will be able to make improved decisions about your ads and SEO or search engine optimization strategy.
If you try various versions of branded keywords Or Find branded keywords, you could discover search results that give you more insight into your customers.
Some companies say they found new target markets they can target with unique landing pages. And it all comes from just using branded keywords as part of your Digital marketing efforts.
If you aren’t convinced to bid on your branded keywords after reviewing our list, your reluctance is understandable; who wants to spend unnecessary money on ads? However, experience shows that bidding on branded keywords could give you some of the best ROI in your Digital marketing spend.
If your company is operating a pay-per-click or PPC campaigns, you should spend some of your ad budgets on branded keywords. Some experts say you should dedicate about 15% of your ad budget to branded keywords.
This is an effective strategy because it’s some of the least expensive web traffic you can get. Also, by targeting branded search terms:
Running online ads is about getting the most bang for your buck. If you aren’t getting a return on your ad campaign, it’s a waste.
Obviously, more sales will help increase your return. But lowering the cost of running an ad campaign/PPC Campaign will increase your return as well.
That’s where PPC (pay-per-click) automation comes in. It helps you save time and money by streamlining manual processes on the backend.
PPC automation refers to managing and optimizing your multiple PPC campaigns through technology like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML).
The more PPC campaigns you have and the bigger they are, the more important/Best PPC automation becomes.
There are two types of PPC automation software:
Both types of PPC automation software help you scale your Google ads campaigns.
But where do you start?
Well, here are 12 PPC automation tools you can try today:
Custom builds are rule-driven automations that allow you to customize just about anything on an ad. It’s also the most complicated form of automation and will take an experienced coder to build.
Artificial intelligence for PPC can play a significant role in custom builds.
Scripts are data-driven automations that use javascript code. They tell ads to follow certain functions based on how they perform. For example, you can have scripts for ad schedules that determine when it’s best to run a particular ad.
Though you can custom program ad scripts, you can also choose scripts from Google’s library of code scripts for free. No coding required.
Google Ads Editor is a free downloadable program that helps you create, track, and edit Google Ads. It also lets you make bulk changes across multiple accounts at the same time. For a free program, it’s hard to beat.
Semrush’s PPC Ads Toolkit helps you track and assess google ads across search engines and social media platforms. With it, you can perform keyword research and see how your google ads perform against your competitors. Subscriptions start at $119.95/month.
Swydo provides automated ad reporting and monitoring. It integrates data sets from different ad platforms like Facebook Insights and Google Ads so you can have it all in one place. You can try Swydo for free, after which the pricing starts at $39/month.
Optmyzr is a PPC automation tool you can use with Bing ads and Adwords. It uses AI to help you add and remove keywords, change placements on display networks, change bids, and more. They offer a free trial, after which subscriptions start at $208/month.
Spyfu is a competitor keyword research tool that gives you keyword ideas. But it also helps you do backlink outreach, run custom reports, and more. As of this writing, they have a limited-time $9/month offer. But their regular basic plan starts at $33/month.
AdEspresso is a one-stop solution for managing and optimizing your ads on Facebook, Instagram, and Google. It helps you save time from switching between different platforms and channels.
Plus, AdEspresso lets you collaborate with client accounts if you run Google ads for others. You can test it with a free 14-day trial, after which pricing starts at $49/month.
Google Data Studio isn’t strictly a PPC automation tool. But it helps you visualize data with custom reports. This is nice for importing ad campaign/PPC Campaign data and sharing it with others in meetings. Importing Google ad data is especially easy. And best of all, it’s free.
Zapier isn’t just a PPC automation tool either. But it can save you time on your PPC ads campaign by automating workflows. Any manual tasks that you find yourself doing repeatedly, you can automate through a “zap.” Try it out for yourself with a free trial and then pay as little as 19.99/month.
Adzooma helps you manage your ad campaign across Google, Microsoft, and Facebook. What’s unique about this tool is its ability to check accounts every 30 minutes to automatically adjust ad budgets and improve performance.
You can also set up custom alerts to react to changes immediately. Try it for free for limited features and then upgrade to a paid plan later.
Smec is geared toward ecommerce ad campaign. It helps you manage and automate ad campaign across multiple platforms and provides retail insights about shopping behavior so you can identify opportunities to grow your business. If you’re in the retail space, Smec is a must.
Whatever PPC automation tools you choose, be prepared to invest some time into learning how to use it.
You may not see results immediately, but eventually, your ad campaign will perform better, and you’ll need to ad spend less time on them.
If you’d rather not bother with tools at all, consider partnering with PPC.co. We provide comprehensive PPC Campaign management services /PPC Managers with proven results.
Our expert team can optimize your google ad campaigns across Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and more. Whether you’re struggling with display ads or Google Ads retargeting, we can help.
We can also help you combine your SEO and PPC strategies so they effectively match!
Contact us today to get a free proposal!
Search dominates the modern zeitgeist.
If you want to look up information on a topic, you search for it.
If you want to buy a specific product, you search for it.
If you’re facing a tough problem and you don’t know where to start, you search for it.
So it’s no wonder why search marketing and advertising have come to be the dominant strategies utilized by businesses to improve visibility, authority, traffic, and conversions.
Now, depending on who you ask, you might get one of two different answers for the best way to approach search marketing.
Some will insist that search engine optimization (SEO) is the best strategy.
Others will say it’s pay per click (PPC) advertising.
But the truth is, both of these strategies have incredible potential. And if you use them together in the right ways, you can see even better organic search results.
What exactly are the differences between these two strategies? How can you optimize your approach to each? And how can you use them together to even greater effect?
Before we delve into specific strategies and tactics you can use to harness the full potential of both search engine optimization (SEO) and PPC ad’s, let’s talk about the basics of these Digital marketing and advertising campaigns or PPC Campaign.
SEO Is all about increasing your organic rankings in search engines results pages (SERPs). Google and other search engines use a variety of ranking factors to determine which web pages to rank for a certain query and how to order them. If you can learn how to manipulate these ranking factors, you can increase your rankings, thereby making your webpages more visible in organic searches and attracting more traffic in the process.
Some of the most common tactics for this include developing robust onsite content, improving technical factors like loading time and site security, and building offsite links. It’s a long-term strategy that takes many months, and sometimes years to fully develop.
With PPC, you’ll use Google Ads and similar platforms to bid on and ultimately place advertisements above the fold in SERPs. There are also PPC ads on other platforms, like social media sites, but for now, we’re going to focus exclusively on search engines PPC ad’s.
You can control almost every variable in this process, choosing which keywords you want to display for, the audiences you want to target, and how much you’re willing to spend on this PPC campaign. However, the cost of this strategy goes up based on competition, so if you’re competing with many big businesses, this can get expensive fast.
That said, PPC advertising management is one of the most reliable ways to generate traffic, since you’re only paying for the people who actually click on your ad.
So how can SEO and PPC work together?
There are a few different ways to look at this.
For starters, we should understand that both SEO and PPC have strengths and weaknesses. Many of these strengths and weaknesses are complementary, meaning that if we use these strategies together closely enough, they can cancel out each other’s weaknesses and play to each other’s strengths.
We can also see these strategies as individually optimized for different types of SERP coverage. Only by utilizing both will you be able to maximize your visibility in search engines results.
However, we should also address a common misconception here: SEO and PPC don’t work directly together by feeding off each other. It’s tempting to think that paying for Google ads for a specific keyword could increase your likelihood of ranking for that organic keyword, but this is not the case. Paid search ads don’t have any effect on your domain authority or your ranking potential, and ranking highly in search engines organically isn’t going to benefit your PPC campaign directly.
Now let’s take a look at the specific ways you can use organic search ranking and paid search ads together.
Always start by keeping a consistent brand voice. If you don’t have a voice already created for your brand, now is the time to create one. Too often, companies sharply segment their search engine optimization (SEO) and PPC teams, resulting in a fractured voice that users find confusing and disorienting. But you have to remember, your prospects and customers are going to be encountering your brand in multiple different contexts. If you want to build their familiarity and trust, all your Google ads and search rankings need to embody the same values and personality.
Don’t allow your Digital marketing teams to become siloed. Instead, share information across departmental barriers. Both your SEO and PPC teams will be collecting valuable information, such as traffic rates, behavioral patterns, demographic interests, and engagement rates. For example, you may learn that one specific keyword fetches a much higher conversion rate than another; you can then incorporate this keyword into organic content for your SEO campaign. But this type of maneuver is only possible if all your departments and all your team members are openly sharing information with each other.
Instead of thinking about your SEO and PPC goals as separate, start thinking about them as two branched paths toward the same end destination: SERP domination. Advertisements give you the opportunity to achieve more visibility than organic rankings In some contexts, but you’ll also have organic ranking opportunities where keywords are too expensive to justify a bid. If you harness the full potential of both, you can get more SERP coverage and make your brand visible to even more people.
Remember that there is no such thing as a perfect digital marketing strategy. SEO is extremely cost effective, but it’s also sluggish and time intensive. PPC, by contrast, is fast and reliable, but it’s also more expensive. To get the most value out of both strategies, you’ll need to play to their individual strengths, while minimizing weaknesses. One common manifestation of this is focusing on PPC ads while developing authority for specific organic keywords; you can start taking advantage of traffic streams immediately, while slowly building up your onsite optimization.
Search related strategies only work if you truly understand your audience. You need to understand who you’re targeting, what their values are, what their goals are, and even how they think, at least to an extent. If you blindly optimize or bid for keywords based on your own intuitions, you’re going to fail. You’re also going to fail if you attempt to cater to a generic, universal audience. More on that in our next point.
At least in the beginning, focus on targeting niche audiences, rather than general audiences. Optimizing content and advertisements for young men in college is far superior to optimizing content and advertisements for everyone in the country. There are several reasons for this. First, you’ll face less competition, which is advantageous in SEO and PPC; you’ll pay less money for ads and you’ll be able to climb rankings faster. Second, you’ll achieve more relevance, meaning you’ll be more successful attracting people to your website and converting them.
What level of awareness is exhibited by your target audience?
How does that level of awareness change throughout the buyer journey?
For example, your customer may start out not even having awareness that they have a problem. At some point, they’ll be aware that a problem exists, but they won’t have awareness of the solutions available for it.
Gradually, they’ll work through the later stages, eventually becoming aware of products like yours, then your specific product, then your brand.
Throughout this by your journey, you’ll find “hidden” keywords and phrases that reveal the searcher’s intent, like “slow air leak” or “why nobody is applying for a job.” Capitalize on these to improve your relevance and avoid the competition.
Local optimization is ideal for reducing competition and appealing to specific audiences. Even if your company operates on a national level, it can be helpful to target some local terms. This is true for both SEO and PPC; local ads are cheaper than national ads, and you can optimize your website faster for local terms than national ones. Use localized landing pages and other localized content to fully capture the local audiences you target.
Keep your finger on the pulse. Don’t assume that your target audience is going to continue following the same trends and exhibiting the same behavioral patterns indefinitely. One of the best ways to do this, in addition to measuring and analyzing traffic on your site, is to analyze search trends. Which terms are rising in popularity? Which ones are falling? How is user intent evolving?
When targeting specific keywords for SEO or PPC, most marketers rightfully target words that are high in volume and low in competition, maximizing the number of people who will see the advertisement or onsite content piece while minimizing the number of competitors aggressively appealing to it. This is usually a good strategy, allowing you to improve cost effectiveness and avoid wasting time period however, you should avoid “keyword traps” that looked good on paper, but won’t lend much value to your business. These keywords may be high in volume and low in competition, but they aren’t relevant to your central business or your target demographics.
One of the shortfalls of SEO it’s the amount of time it takes to generate momentum for a website. Even if you invest heavily, writing tons of valuable content and building new links every week, you may not see initial ranking progress for several weeks or months. It’s going to take even longer to achieve a steady stream of heavy traffic. One of the best ways to close the gap here is to invest in PPC ads as a shortcut for immediate visibility; as long as you’re willing to pay for them, you can start generating traffic right now.
The flip side of this is that PPC ads are ephemeral; as soon as you stop paying for them, they disappear. If you want to have a more lasting impact, you need to establish pages of your website as intrenched, powerful content centerpieces. SEO is far better for this purpose. Use SEO to optimize pages of your website for evergreen keywords you expect to be relevant and valuable for the foreseeable future.
Competitors can be brutal, paying to rank for your branded keywords or completely taking over a niche you thought was exclusively yours. These aggressive maneuvers are easy to spot, but only if you’re paying attention to recent changes in relevant SERPs. Accordingly, you should employ ongoing competitor monitoring, taking notice of any major activity and responding accordingly.
Oftentimes, marketers and advertisers get lost in the idea of improving brand visibility and generating more traffic. But what do you do with that traffic once it hits your website? You’ll need to provide a powerful first impression and maximize user attention and interest to get more value out of each of these strategies. Fortunately, you can double dip with some of your assets, using them for both your SEO and PPC campaigns. One of the best examples of this is unique landing pages, which you can create for specific types of visitors and audience segments. Funnel all relevant traffic from organic searches and paid ads to landing pages that are relevant for the searcher.
Google is the first name that comes to mind when most people think about SEO or PPC. But Google isn’t the only option for paid advertisements, nor is it the only search engines people use regularly. Bing, DuckDuckGo, Facebook, and YouTube are other search engines, platforms, and media outlets worth considering as part of your strategy. Google gets all the attention because it’s by far the most popular search engines, but that also means it attracts the most competitors. Don’t be afraid to branch out.
People generally respond much better to visual content than written content, so include visuals whenever you can. This is one area where PPC ads are favorable; you can add images to an ad to make it pop. It’s also possible to optimize pages of your website with images and videos, but it can be tricky to make sure they become visible in SERPs.
You may be interested in SEO to improve the visibility of your brand and boost consumer awareness. There’s nothing wrong with this, but if you want to milk as much value out of the strategy as possible, you should optimize SEO for clickthrough rates. In other words, you should see your SEO strategy as only being truly valuable if people are clicking on your webpage and visiting it. Optimize for keywords that align with user search intent and improve your titles and descriptions to attract more traffic. This isn’t usually a problem with PPC ads, since you won’t be paying for people who don’t click your links.
There’s significant room for experimentation in optimizing paid search. You have control over all the variables, you can conduct AB tests quite easily, and you can delve into reporting and analytics to figure out exactly how your ads performed. This makes the PPC ad world a perfect testing ground for headlines, keyword selection, descriptions, and audience positioning. Take full advantage of this and learn lessons about your competitive environment if you want to make the most of both PPC and SEO.
SEO success is highly dependent on your ability to create excellent content and get people to pay attention to that content. But even if you’re an excellent writer, it can be hard to get your work noticed. PPC ads could be the perfect jump start, giving you a guaranteed stream of traffic and introducing hundreds, or even thousands of people to your latest work. From there, you’ll likely find it easier to attract links and inspire more user engagement.
PPC ad extensions are useful, additional pieces of information associated with the ads you place. They could serve to educate, direct, or inspire your target audience, providing details like the location of your business, opportunities to place a call directly, and more. Take full advantage of these; it’s a prime opportunity to immediately engage with prospective customers, rather than merely sending them to your website.
Automate whatever you can. Both SEO and PPC ads require at least some manual effort and human attention, but there’s much you can systematically implement to run in the background. These are both demanding strategies that could potentially monopolize your time, so employ shortcuts and time savers like automation whenever you can.
Are you working with limited experience or a limited team?
Don’t worry. We’re here to help.
We have the team members, resources, knowledge, and expertise to take your PPC campaigns to the next level. Contact PPC.co for a free proposal today!
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