“Products like these are ‘hot’ for a short time so you need to sell them while they still have their novelty value”
Traffic is the lifeblood of an online store. To drive traffic to your store, you can optimize it so that it ranks well naturally on search engine results pages (SERPs), or you can use Pay Per Click (PPC).
But why use PPC when you can use SEO to drive traffic to your store?
Though you should always optimize your store for search engines, there are a few situations where PPC would be the way to go.
When You Sell Fad Or Trend Related Products
Remember the movie Kill Bill? Right after the movie came out, the Internet was abuzz with search terms related to the shoes Uma Thurman’s character – The Bride – wore in the movie. If I’m not mistaken, it was a yellow Asics Tiger Onitsuka Tai Chi model.
The model sold out fast and people began selling them on eBay at ridiculous prices. I swear I spotted someone selling a pair for $1400. They originally cost $89 or so a pair.
Products like these are ‘hot’ for a short time so you need to sell them while they still have their novelty value. In such cases, PPC would be a good option.
When You Want Traffic From Day One
It takes time to rank naturally on SERPs. It may take months to rank naturally for really competitive keywords, so if you need traffic pronto, PPC could be the answer.
Since PPC will cost you money every time someone clicks on your link, remember to target long tail keywords and not general ones in your ads. This way you can ensure you are targeting the right audience with your ads.
Here’s a little tip: You can actually use PPC to ascertain which keywords convert better. Once you have this list of valuable keywords, you can then optimize your store to target those keywords.
Hopefully, in a few months time, with adequate SEO effort, your store will rank well naturally for those money-making keywords. When this happens, you can omit those keywords from your PPC list, thus saving you money.
When Your Site Is Not SEO Friendly
In order for SEO to work, a site needs to have a good amount of content. Search engines like Google crawl a site and figures out what a site is about by looking at its content. However, some sites lack content due to design leanings where aesthetics take center stage and content is a scarce commodity.
In such situations, search engines will find it a tad difficult to piece together enough information to properly categorize a site. Ranking naturally on SERPs would then be an uphill struggle for such sites so PPC would be a viable alternative.
Final Say
By all means, make use of PPC wisely to drive traffic to your store. However, if you’ve got traffic but not conversion, read this to see you’re making full use of our ecommerce software features.
And don’t forget to work on your SEO. If you want more stable traffic in the long run, you’ve got to optimize your store for search engines. Good content will only add value (higher rankings/authority for targeted keywords, higher PR, lower bounce rate) to your site. Last I checked, those were all good things.
If you’ve dabbled in PPC, leave a comment and share your experience with us.
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