If you've had a website or two, you'll know that statement is not really true. To get traffic flowing to your site you can't just build it once and leave it. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) takes some hard work: Writing relevant content regularly. Posting on social media. Establishing your brand as the authoritative voice in the areas that you serve. And even when you do achieve a high ranking for your pages, the regular search engine results still appear far down the page, below all of the advertisements. It is hard to compete against paid advertising with organic alone.
And for years, that's what we've done, and done it well. Our websites have a lot of features that make them great for organic SEO. Like Saved Search and Featured Locations pages that automatically update their content to always show the most recent listings in the areas you are targeting. Like integrations that auto-post your new listings and blog posts to your social media accounts.
But what if you want more? What if organic SEO just isn't cutting it? What if you are willing to pay more to get more but don't know how to get started? A lot of you are in that place and you need a solution. Enter our Google Ads integration.
Success breeds success, and traffic breeds more traffic. When you already have a website that is optimized for organic traffic and then you start paying for ads to drive MORE traffic to it, you get more than the sum of the parts. The two approaches are synergistic. When the increased traffic from the paid ads goes to your high quality, relevant content, and then your website visitors engage with that content, this shows the search engines that your content is high quality and increases your ranking, which in turn drives more organic traffic.
Like many of our website features, we wanted to create a "one size fits most" solution. Something that is super easy and just works. We've come up with a 3 step process:
That's it. We automatically create pages, searches, keywords, campaigns. All of it.
Unlike other website providers, we don't charge an extra management fee or take a percent of your advertising budget. You choose your own budget and pay Google directly. You can turn it off or on at any time. Check back monthly to see which locations are giving you the best return on investment (ROI). You get what you pay for and can see exactly what you get. Even though all of the initial campaigns are set up for you, advanced settings provide you full control if you want to change campaign settings or tweak keywords.
Out of the box, our websites' default settings do a good job of capturing leads from that traffic. If you've been to one of our SEO webinars, you'll know that there is a lot more you can do here to personalize your approach. Things that set you apart. Customizing your calls to action (CTAs). These things are really important. Don't bother paying for PPC if you haven't already worked on improving your lead capture "conversion rates" with the traffic that you already have.
Consider it if:
Probably not if:
Stephen serves as both Graphics Manager and Product Manager at iHOUSEweb. He graduated from Cal Poly with a BS in Applied Art & Design and has been working as a Web Designer and Developer since 1998. He relentlessly pushes himself and the rest of the team to learn, grow, and innovate.