Don't poach your own goals

Rooney, you goal-poaching, spam-faced, bald-spot-plugging, pie-gobbling, own-man-tackling, never-scored-in-a-World-Cup granny botherer, what the hell was this, tackling your own teammate just to blast it clean over the bar??


In the interests of having an excuse to post this here, and not just to rant about England's most naturally gifted overhyped and underperforming player of all time, let's make a totally reasonable, not at all strained comparison with PPC advertising. Yeah, that'll work.

So you've invested in good-quality website content, you've included SEO keywords in all the right places, and you've achieved front-page organic search rankings for those primary keywords.

You're doing well - you're skipping past your competitors like so many Italian defenders. So why oh why would you bid on those same primary keywords in your PPC ads?

I can see why people do it without thinking - "hey, we can totally DOMINATE the results if we bid on them too!" - but it's not what PPC is designed for, and it's a waste of time and money: time, because it means the time spent on improving your organic rankings was a waste when you're just buying your way into the sponsored results anyway; and money, because you're paying twice for your front-page result, once for the SEO work to get into the organic listings, and again for a sponsored ad placement.

PPC is NOT a way to rank for terms that you have successfully optimised through natural/organic methods; it is a way to buy a front-page position until those organic methods start to show results (and it can take a few weeks, especially for a brand-new website).

Spend on the two correctly and you create a two-pronged attack - a charge down the middle with your SEO efforts, and a man out wide with your PPC placements.

Bid on your own successfully optimised organic keywords, though, and your search marketing strategy is akin to a fat bald man nicking the ball from your feet to blast it into the stands. England might not be better than that while Rooney's still in the starting line-up, but you can be the better man.