Do you want to see a lift in your PPC campaigns? If so, optimize your site for SEO.

ICrossing did a study using a random sample of 200 keywords, which included branded and non-branded terms in both organic and paid search campaigns. To quote from iCrossing: “These 200 keywords are representative of 2,000 unique keywords, engines and medium (natural, paid, or both) data point combinations used in paid search as well as ranked in the first three pages of natural search results on the major U.S. engines (Google, Yahoo!, Ask, MSN, and AOL).”

Here’s what they found:

“Online performance is dramatically improved if keywords purchased for a paid search campaign are also ranked in natural search.”

Here’s what happened when they incorporated organic search into an existing paid search campaign and compared its performance to the performance of the paid search campaign alone:

• Increase in Clicks — 91.80%
• Increase in Actions — 45.00%
• Increase in Orders — 44.92%
• Increase in Page views — 43.63%
• Increase in Visitors — 40.69%
• Increase in Time on Site — 38.91%

You can download the study (PDF) for details at: http://www.icrossing.com/research

A Tip to Improve Your PPC Campaign

Google AdWords recently changed its quality scoring, and Yahoo Panama also includes new performance pricing. Therefore, you need some new campaign strategies. One strategy is the use of negative keywords to help you achieve better performance from your paid search ads.

When you add negative keywords to your campaign, this allows you to target the specific keywords you want emphasize. With so many keyword phrase combinations to choose from, targeting the terms that will pay off is critical. More precise keyword targeting can increase the relevance of your ads while increasing your click-throughs and conversions.

Using negative keywords can also reduce the number of less relevant ad impressions while increasing click-throughs. Since click-throughs are a factor in your quality score, the use of negative keywords can improve your quality score. Ideally, the end result is a lower overall click cost and some better ad placements.

You can find negative keywords in Yahoo’s Keyword Selector Tool or the Google AdWords Keyword Tool.