Paid Media vs SEO with Navah Hopkins

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay per Click (PPC) are both central to a successful PR strategy. But where should you start? What yields the best results? Find out from Navah Hopkins, Director of Paid Media at Hennessey Digital, who previously worked on SEO at WordStream.  

In this episode of the Social PR Secrets Podcast, host Lisa Buyer sits down with Navah Hopkins. Navah started out in SEO when the field was barely burgeoning. She is now heading the paid media division of Hennessy Digital. In this episode, Lisa and Navah discuss everything SEO and PPC, from attribution and bounce rate to algorithms and budgets. 

Where to Start?

When asked whether companies should start with SEO or PPC, Navah answered with another question: what kind of budget and time are you willing to spend? Indeed, SEO cannot be tested in a short period of time. No matter how good a strategy is, it will only start yielding results in 6 to 9 months. With paid media, you need to be willing to spend more money, but it requires less waiting time. 

For fast results, Navah recommends running ads on Facebook but points out that only e-commerce businesses will get quality results from that strategy. With paid, she recommends starting more aggressively in the first thirty to sixty days to help the algorithms understand what you are all about. With SEO, start with my sure you’re site is great, otherwise, your SEO strategy will be rendered useless.

Is my strategy successful?

According to Navah, it is easy to realize when a PPC strategy is failing but with a good tracking system, everyone will realize they need to invest in SEO. That being said, one of the best ways to measure SEO and PPC success is to look at customers’ journey and conversion paths. Navah also advises that bounce rates need to be analyzed carefully. A high bounce rate isn’t necessarily bad, especially on a content-heavy platform like a blog.

“Attribution and last-click attribution is one of the main reasons why SEO gets the short end of the stick,” said Navah. Unfortunately, Google Analytics defaults to last-click attribution, not showing the full journey. First click attribution is also misleading. Navah recommends showing clients models of revenues based on different attribution models.

Message Mapping

Message mapping is thinking about who your customer personas are and making sure you are not putting the same ads and content to everybody. To create these personas, analytics are incredibly important, specific audience segments. 

Is the Facebook algorithm really getting smarter? Which platforms should you use to learn more about SEO? What are the best workflow strategies when working from home? Listen to this episode to learn more from Navah!

“SEO is like climate change, it’s silly people don’t believe in it.” - Navah Hopkins

Some topics discussed in this episode include:

• SEO
• PPC
• Analytics 
• Bounce rate
• Last click attribution
• Workflow 
• Message mapping

Contact Navah Hopkins: 

• Navah’s LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/navahhopkins/
• Navah’s Twitter https://twitter.com/navahf?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eautho

References and Links Mentioned

• SEJ eSummit https://www.searchenginejournal.com/sej-esummit/
• Google Ads certification https://skillshop.exceedlms.com/student/catalog/list?category_ids=2844-google-ads-certifications
• CommitTo3 https://www.committo3.com/
• TSheets https://www.tsheets.com/
• Asana https://asana.com/