When people in PR circles talk about search marketing, the focus is usually on search engine optimization rather than PPC. However, PPC can be a very valuable search marketing tool that creates instant search visibility and drives traffic to news-related content. For example, The New York Times is known to use Google AdWords to promote their news stories with hot, trending topics online.



Similarly, PR professionals can use PPC advertising to draw instant traffic to news items, content, and stories on a company website. PPC can be used to drive traffic to brand names, company names, and executive names in a PR campaign.

PPC VS SEO

Making the decision between using PPC or SEO will depend on your objectives. PPC advertisements are typically on-demand or react to content that is listed in the regular search results. For example, PPC can be a valuable resource in a reputation management campaign. If there are negative listings about a company listed in search engine results, a PR professional can created PPC ads with positive information about the company to attract customer attention away from the negative listings. PPC is a great way to counter negative search results because it is possible to track how effective your landing pages are and make specific adjustments to your campaign.

On the other hand, SEO is a long term PR effort that requires an ongoing investment of time and resources. SEO is very effective when you integrate it in your content creation and promotion efforts. When you do keyword research, add important keywords to your content, and ensure that your content is crawlable, you attract inbound links, which raises your search engine ranking and drives more traffic to your site over time.

Results from an SEO campaign are usually not immediate so SEO efforts have to be a part of an ongoing commitment to achieve results. The effects of an SEO campaign that includes continued content creation, promotion, and link building, are cumulative in that the more content you create and the more inbound links you receive, the more traffic you receive from search engines.

Although PPC is more on-demand than SEO, it does require several key components in order to be successful. Some important components of a successful PPC campaign include keyword research, proper account structure, landing pages, tracking and internal responses, and follow through post conversions. It takes time to develop an effective PPC campaign and it also takes a while to develop an ad quality score.

All in all, PPC and SEO need to be part of a bigger PR and online marketing strategy. PPC will bring you immediate traffic whereas it takes time build traffic via SEO. The important thing is for PR professionals to start testing out PPC and including in their standard mix rather than just giving SEO attention. In order to make the most of their search marketing campaigns, PR professionals should use both PPC and SEO together to achieve specific goals. PPC should be utilized to achieve goals that are on-demand and reactive whereas SEO should be used to achieve goals that are long-term and proactive.