The Must-Have SEO Basics Before Thinking About Paid Ads
The question — which is better: SEO or SEA? After all, it’s also a legitimate strategy to first place ads on a new website in order to gain visibility right away. And we also know that SEO is only successful in the long term and that you don’t want to wait until the first searchers get lost on your website.
And even if these are absolutely valid arguments, some basic SEO basics should be ensured, so that your ads are displayed to the appropriate, potential customers and you do not pay too high CPCs (cost per click).
1. Keyword research
A comprehensive keyword research is the basis for your search engine optimization and advertising. Somehow logical, because you want to optimize your content for certain search terms and make it findable. Be it via organic, i.e. unpaid search results or via paid ads.
Nevertheless, it happens again and again that a complete and detailed keyword research is neglected. And this in turn leads to the fact that ads and the corresponding landing pages to which the ads lead, are not aligned with the appropriate keywords or search phrases and the success of the ads fails to materialize and also the CPCs are higher than expected.
2. Optimized landing pages
Your keyword research is also the basis for your optimized landing pages. Because these should be optimized for specific search phrases or keywords — including title, meta description, URL, etc.
Because in the end, the Google crawlers also evaluate the relevance of your landing page in relation to the keywords entered in Google Ads. And this is done according to pretty much the same evaluation patterns as in SEO.
3. Content Clarity & Positioning
Another reason why it is advised not to start directly with paid ads, is the positioning and the associated content clarity. Because if you are a start-up, most likely a lot will change in the first year — from your ideal customers to your offer, your orientation and approach. Pretty much everything can sort itself out or align itself again. And that is quite normal and good. After all, it’s part of the process of developing your business.
Granted, this isn’t really an SEO ranking factor but rather a necessary prerequisite to do good online marketing, no matter on which channel.
4. Your website must be findable
Search engine must be able to access and crawl your landing pages. Otherwise, the quality and suitability for certain search queries cannot be assessed and your quality factor, which determines how much you pay for your clicks, decreases.
5. Site speed
For many webmasters a really hated topic but the loading speed of your website is not without reason an important ranking factor for search engines. for years. Your visitors simply don’t want to wait longer than 3 seconds until they see the content of your landing page after they clicked on your search result or your ad.
6. Mobile optimization
Your website should also be optimized for mobile devices. This means that all the information should be easily and quickly readable and usable from a smartphone.
You can place your ads only on desktop devices, but this would limit your potential reach enormously. Most people use their smartphones primarily for googling and researching. You probably do too, don’t you? And mobile optimization or a responsive website is also a must for your SEO efforts. Because after the switch to the mobile-first index, Google crawls your website only as a mobile device. This means: If the complete relevant content is not available on mobile, it looks bad for your SEO rankings.
