Finally, prepare to pay for listings. Set aside some budget for a PPC campaign. It would be best if you could afford to pay for your high traffic general phrases, because these are likely the phrases that will take the longest to recover from a major site change. You shouldn’t have to bid on branded phrases (such as your company name) because these rankings will likely return the quickest.

If, however, you have competitors or affiliates bidding on those terms you may also need to bid on them to keep your traffic up. You should already have an agreement in place which forces your affiliates to bid lower than you on these terms, so you should be able to keep your costs down on them.

You should have the budget to cover two to three months traffic. This is likely an extended duration as most sites are re-indexed fairly quickly but it is better to be prepared for it, in case something happens.

Your PPC campaign should also cover the major PPC engines – at this time they are Yahoo! and Google. You could also branch out to other smaller engines such as Ask Jeeves and Looksmart as they can sometimes send highly qualified traffic at a fraction of the cost of the larger providers.

As a side note, when you set up your PPC campaign, don’t use broad matching. Try and keep your campaign as specific as possible – this will help you keep your costs down because you’ll only be paying for those clicks, and they will likely be more qualified clicks.

If you follow these simple tips: planning for and minimizing changes as much as possible and preparing for the worst by planning a PPC campaign to offset your losses, then you should be able to maintain your traffic and recover your previous positions within a short period of time.

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