From the start I’m going to show my cards - I believe SEO and content investment is better for your business in the long run. However, it does depend on your objectives and products and there is no reason SEO and PPC can’t work in harmony.

PPC gives you immediate and trackable results, you can see which campaigns are working and how much investment it takes for exactly how many results. However, the minute you stop those ads, the click throughs and conversions stop. And you are tied to continually invest that amount month on month otherwise... no traffic!

SEO, on the other hand, can be a slow burner. In one month you could have implemented several actions such as: rewritten your copy to include more keywords, created targeted content that engages your customers or given out interviews or content in popular magazines or news sites. You may see a spike in your traffic, maybe an increase in subscriptions to your newsletter etc. It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly what activity caused which reaction. However, even without building on the success of the previous month, the content and SEO tweaks made will still be generating traffic in the following month.

For example, if you were launching a new line or new product and you want to reach the widest audience possible. Targeted PPC and Google Shopping will give you the best exposure to as many people in a short amount of time. However, over time the benefits of SEO outweigh the continued investment needed by PPC. Think of PPC as renting an audience, whilst SEO builds a constant audience over time. The bottom line is growing an audience takes time and hard work, whilst PPC can offer automatic results. Chose each method according to your timeline and what you want to achieve.

3 best practice PPC tips for e-commerce managers:

1. Segment your campaigns so you can see what really works. If you sell various women's clothing, whilst a broad campaign will give you plenty of impressions, your cost-per-click will be high and it may impact on your conversions. Splitting out your campaigns into segments gives you more control. For example:

Women's clothing > Jackets > DenimWomen's clothing > Jackets > LeatherWomen's clothing > Jackets > Suit

Or

Women's clothing > Skirts > MidiWomen's clothing > Skirts > MaxiWomen's clothing > Skirts > Mini

You can go into further detail in each category. Put thought into how you structure your campaigns and ad groups, it will give you more control and the ability to spend more on a product range or campaign that is performing well, or conversely pause campaigns that underperform or where the conversions aren’t worth the spend.

2. Use your USP in your adverts with strong calls to action. The internet as a whole is cluttered and you need to stand out. There is a reason your business is different to your competitors, show it off! Remember you’ll often be bidding against your competition for ad ranking so it pays to make your ads, landing pages and URLs relevant to the products on your landing pages.
3. Negative keywords are just as important ad keywords you expect traction from. Only sell women's clothing? Then use a plethora of terms for men's clothing as your negative keywords. If you don’t stock it you are wasting valuable clicks and cash and increase the bounce rate for your entire store. You could consider using -menswear and -men's clothing online as negative keywords and even drill it down to -boxer shorts if you feel like getting granular.

3 best practice SEO tips for e-commerce managers:

1 . Define your keywords. Keywords are the cornerstone of your e-commerce business; they are how search engines categorise your website and how your customers find your store. Keywords are essentially shortcuts that allow search engines to crawl your page quickly to return accurate results when those terms are inputted. Keyword, competitor and customer research is vital to stay ahead in the SEO race for the first page. Research your competitors and what keywords they are using, see what search terms make their adverts appear and build this into your SEO plan. Use tools such as Google’s Keyword planner to estimate search volume and get ideas for related keywords. This research is critical for on-page optimisation and will generate content idea and headlines.

2 . On-page optimisation. Using the keywords you discovered above there are 5 places they need to be used on your website:

1. Titles
2. Descriptions,
3. URLs
4. Headings & Content
5. Image alt text

For a more in-depth guide on how to use keywords visit ‘Best practice SEO keyword usage for e-commerce websites’. On-page optimisation doesn’t stop at keywords however, it also includes images, page load time and how your page performs on mobile. All of these factors will affect your page score, which will, in turn, determine how Google ranks your site in relevance to search phrases.

3 . Content that answers questions for your customers. A tried and tested method for generating content ideas is to identify a common problem your customers are having, create content targeting people with that problem and offer them a solution! Write naturally and create content that focuses on your customer's needs, not how many times you can fit your suggested search terms into the H1 header of your content. Remember you are writing for humans and bots alike, so whilst your keywords should be prominent, it also should be useful and entertaining. Search through your communications with your customers, are there any recurring themes? If so, create a commonly asked questions blog or page using the responses you gave directly to the customer. Build your brand with knowledgeable, reliable, well-written content, and make sure to make every communication count.

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