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View Full Version : PPC Advertising vs. SEO


nicknite86
11th June 2010, 17:49
There are two ways to get traffic to any site. You can either get traffic to your website for free, such as SEO or you can use paid advertising; PPC (pay-per-click).

Often, there is a debate and constant warring between which strategy will be the best strategy to implement in exposing your site to the masses.

In actuality, Internet Marketing is a numbers game, and so the more targeted traffic you can get to your website, the more you will convert, and the more money you’ll make.

So which strategy is the best, free or paid?

Search Engine Optimization:

Free marketing strategies; such as SEO, are just as good as paid marketing, if not better. For example, when the majority of people go searching for information online, they go to Google or any other search engine and type in a phrase; such as “How to Cook and Clean”. The results they get back are divided into two parts, and that is Organic and Paid advertising. These differences are usually easy to identify. The organic results are listed on the left hand side and are listed 1-10 through a series of pages, while the paid are listed on the far right hand side.

When doing a search people will often decide which way is best to resolve their dilemma or situation, and most often people tend to use the free results. Thus, this is enough to indicate that if you want to get highly targeted and free traffic to your website it would be a good idea to get into the Organic results. However, many things are involved, including getting backlinks to your site, making sure you have the right keyword density, and optimizing your site. The downside to Search Engine Optimization is that in order to get your website ranked high, it can be very time consuming. This is a reason why many marketers choose to skip SEO and use Pay-Per-Click with Google Adwords, Bing, or Yahoo Overture.


PAY PER CLICK (PPC):

In short, Pay-Per-Click is when you tell Google; or any other company, how much you want to be charged every time your advertisement is clicked. The higher the amount that you set to be charged will often determine how high your website will rank in the search engines. On the other hand, if you set a low amount then your PPC may not give you good results.

The “pros” of PPC marketing is that it takes a small amount of time to get up and running, but the “con” is that you can not just set up a campaign and expect to make tons of money. PPC is a science and should be implemented with strategy, therefore doing the homework is crucial because if you don’t choose the right keywords and/or charges you could end up losing tons of money and FAST. So PPC takes skill, learning, and possibly experience to succeed.


In short, SEO is a great way for beginners to get a site ranked high in organic results. SEO may be frustrating but once you succeed with SEO the benefits are great. This is also true with PPC, but there is much more risk involved since your success is dependent on your money and skill. Overall, it’s necessary to research both SEO and PPC as much as possible before leaning upon either.

BSUK
11th June 2010, 19:32
A friend of mine recently purchased an online business. Profit in the past 3 years £400,000 PPC spend £275,000. The previous owner had not even tried improving the organic positioning within the major search engines, even though the sites sub pages hold a fair amount of strength.

The new owners priority is to improve the platform and then work on improving the organic positioning so PPC can be turned off.

The question is, is this a wise strategy?

directmarketingadvice
11th June 2010, 20:36
A friend of mine recently purchased an online business. Profit in the past 3 years £400,000 PPC spend £275,000. The previous owner had not even tried improving the organic positioning within the major search engines, even though the sites sub pages hold a fair amount of strength.

The new owners priority is to improve the platform and then work on improving the organic positioning so PPC can be turned off.

The question is, is this a wise strategy?

Sounds to me like he wants to stop running ads that are making him £125,000 p.a..

Is that wise?

I suppose that, if he were spending that money on cocaine and prostitutes, it might be better for him to not have the money in the first place.

But if he was enjoying the money in an intelligent way, he'd probably be better continuing with the ads.

Steve

sirearl
11th June 2010, 20:46
A friend of mine recently purchased an online business. Profit in the past 3 years £400,000 PPC spend £275,000. The previous owner had not even tried improving the organic positioning within the major search engines, even though the sites sub pages hold a fair amount of strength.

The new owners priority is to improve the platform and then work on improving the organic positioning so PPC can be turned off.

The question is, is this a wise strategy?

He won't know untill he tries it,but as Steve says if PPC is making 125k why turn it off unless it is stealing traffic from his organic listings.?

Earl

BSUK
11th June 2010, 20:49
My explanation must have been poor

The previous owners made £400k in 3 years minus £275k PPC - total profit for 3 years £125k

Funnily enough I recommended the new owner speak to you Steve.

BrightIdeas
11th June 2010, 20:50
I think your friend needs to do tests and see. But, if it's profitable for him to be 'everywhere' on the results pages, then it wouldn't be sensible to stop. But, this is ripe for testing, I would think!

Edit: sorry, cross posting going on here. Didn't see your response.

BSUK
11th June 2010, 20:55
My thoughts are PPC should be outsourced to an expert and maintained at a sensible rate, whilst organic placement is improved, working towards the goal of turning off PPC in time. Of course it's a mathematical problem that many businesses have.

sirearl
11th June 2010, 20:59
My thoughts are PPC should be outsourced to an expert and maintained at a sensible rate, whilst organic placement is improved, working towards the goal of turning off PPC in time. Of course it's a mathematical problem that many businesses have.

But why turn off PPC if its making money.?:|

Earl

BSUK
11th June 2010, 21:11
It's a relevant question Earl

I think the site owner is convinced if the organic positioning was improved, (it's not a competitive sector) that more net profit will be obtained.

Bear in mind I said sub page strength is already strong.

MASSEY
12th June 2010, 03:09
No one can determine weather to turn the ppc off untill his rank has imp0orved in the results pages and they have had time to measure traffic.

I know some peoples opinions are if it aint broke dont fix it but the potential money saver this could be i would say it was worth a go myself.

Worst case you turn the ppc back on dont you.

WeblinkPlus
12th June 2010, 07:25
A friend of mine recently purchased an online business. Profit in the past 3 years £400,000 PPC spend £275,000. The previous owner had not even tried improving the organic positioning within the major search engines, even though the sites sub pages hold a fair amount of strength.

The new owners priority is to improve the platform and then work on improving the organic positioning so PPC can be turned off.

The question is, is this a wise strategy?

If he can make the same (or more) sales with SEO as PPC, then why not? Profit automatically increases due to no PPC costs, and in fact it may be that sales will increase with SEO, though that is not a given. As others say, testing is required to find the answers...

directmarketingadvice
12th June 2010, 08:05
My explanation must have been poor

The previous owners made £400k in 3 years minus £275k PPC - total profit for 3 years £125k

No, it was my mistake. I was clearly too sleepy after watching the France game.

Steve

NextPoint
12th June 2010, 12:40
Hmmm... Doesn't sound very wise to me - you have to speculate to accumulate. If the business owner thinks that traffic generated from SEO is free, he should think again - SEO traffic may be free in the sense that they don't have to pay Google money to get traffic, but they will still have to pay with their own time or hiring someone, which will still cost them cash either in lost productivity on their money making activities through time they invest themselves or hiring a professional to manage their organic search engine listings.

In addition, getting natural traffic from search engines is an ongoing effort and less calculatable than PPC advertising. If Google change their algorithm or more successful competitors come onto the scene, their business could suffer dramatically if their website is pushed off page 1. They could decide to go back to PPC again, but they would end up paying more because they would lose out by having to start again with their click through scores.

Best way to look at it is if PPC is working, it should be one element they should keep as part of a bigger marketing campaign.

PressGuy
13th June 2010, 05:08
Thanks guys.. very much informative post.

consultantUK
13th June 2010, 08:47
80% PPC 20% SEO. You can never be 100% sure what happens in SEO and there are delays and upsets all the time. PPC is targeted and can be turned on and off like a light switch.

tradedemon
13th June 2010, 10:30
With that amount of money going in and out, optimisations and refinements would be neccessary both on the PPC and the SEO (which I guess he's begun).

I do agree with one point though that if you're making money from PPC and have found a good combination of keywords and ad listings it's difficult to really want to stop that operation. And as someone mentioned above SEO positions can fluctuate.

Anyway great scenario to be in :) I wish I was working on that project lol