Today we are going to discuss how you can leverage your SEO efforts and maximize the return on the work you put into SEO.

What is Search Re-targeting?

Re-targeting is a form of marketing in which you “retarget” users that have previously visited your website. Let’s say a visitor comes to your webpage via a Google Organic search term, you’ll want to keep hitting them with follow up ads as they surf the web. Don’t worry; I’m not sure there is anything currently illegal about stalking online. Basically you pay for impressions on other website to display your ads with visitors who have previously showed interest or at least visited your website within a set amount of time.

So what is Search Retargeting?

The difference between re-targeting and search retargeting is this: the visitor does not actually have to visit your website to be targeted. You can now target lost visitors by going after them in a categorically, industry, or service specific searches in the search engines.

What is the True Value of Search Re-targeting?

Statistics show that you have a ~70% better chance at converting your visitors into paying customers by retargeting customers as opposed to not re-targeting customers.  Not only do you have a greater chance at closing your clients, but you also have a higher likelihood that customers that do convert from retargeting spend on average ~50% more than those who have not been retargeted.

How Do I Maximize My Efforts From My SEO Work With Retargeting?

#1: Share your rankings data

You want to share your rankings data with your PPC team in order to maximize both your efforts. You know the keywords that you aren’t quite ranked for yet? Those are the ones you are going to want to build highly targeted ads for.  Supplement what you have not done with SEO, and push over to PPC.

Let’s say you are ranking for “Free Christian Music” but are not ranking well for “Free Christian MP3’s”, “Christian MP3’s”, “Christian Music” etc. with ads that are specific to that audience looking for Christian Music! You will be directly speaking to the intent of the search which is for “Christian Music”.

#2: Compile your complete keyword list

Love it or hate it we all know that keyword research is a huge obstacle we all must cross when deciding and analyzing our keywords to target. This leaves us with thousands of keyword phrases we can use for retargeting.

Your action item is this: send over your complete keyword list to your paid marketing expert, and have them retarget those customers for your company. Target the topics, website categories, etc. Hammer them with search marketing ads until they scream uncle! You can do this until you have more time and resources to allocate a proper SEO campaign build out per keyterm.

#3: Research the competition and use the data

Simple yet most are not taking advantage of this. You must see what your competitors are ranking for and (if profitable) go after those same keywords as well. Not just for SEO or PPC, but taking all the data you can get into account. This includes the old school meta keyword tags if they are still utilizing them.

One way to maximize our efforts is to utilize brand and descriptive intent to buy terms to our benefit. For example: “Christian Music Videos” or “Christian Music Chris Tomlin”, etc.

There are 2 bottom lines to this story:

1. If you are not utilizing retargeting campaigns for your potential website visitors you are losing out on 70% more business and an increased spend of about 50%.
2. Work independently of other channels in marketing but share the data.

Now (if you have the budget) get out there and create highly effective search retargeting campaigns!

Image By: Pete – CC BY 2.0