Do I need SEO or is PPC enough??

[Bamn]

Hi all,

I run a company that is about to launch a new web site in a few months. We are a National company and we are looking to hit the ground running with a marketing campaign to coincide with the launch. We have a budget of around £14,000 for a 6 month campaign.

I have talked to a few companies now and they all seem to have a different slant on the correct marketing route. Some wont touch SEO and some say it's imperative to organically rank. The site is being coded with SEO in mind, so I'm not too concerned about this.

My initial thoughts were to have a big PPC campaign with a number of other things running - (banner adverts and blogs etc) and let google handle the rest, hopefully creating a decent organic ranking after the 6 months, to be evaluated for the following 6 month plan.

Is this naive though? Would a good maketing company with SEO experience make a big difference in how well we rank? And if so are there any people I should be talking to?

It's becoming a minefield especially with SEO. Should all internet marketing companies do some SEO work?

Anyway thank you all in advance for any help.

Regards
Tom

 

[Nconder]

Hi Tom

A careful considered approach to both is a good Idea. There are many companies who will help you with your PPC and you have a good budget to work with but be careful with PPC as third party sources can use up your budget on this very quickly.

Regards
Nigel

 

[NicholasTaylor]

Personally, I don't think you can bury your head to the idea of organic search.

PPC will only get you so far, and it's a life-long expenditure to retain the results you want. It could costs more too, have you considered the average CPC of your industry/niche?

Organic Search results, whilst needing to be maintained and monitored, will bring it better business and likely more business. Reports suggest that a majority of people actually ignore the paid advertising space and focus on the top 3 organic results (I'd quote the source if I could remember where I found it...!)

I'd always favour SEO ahead of PPC - but that's likely due to the negative return I've experienced with PPC.

My two cents, there are a few SEO Legends on this forum - i'm sure they'll post soon!

Cheers

 

[Chris Ashdown]

It's not Coded that makes or breaks SEO as all modern sites are built with SEO in mind

It's the content that makes the big difference, what you put, where you put it but and a big but is the first thing is to sell your product and then get high up the natural or PPC lists as it's no good being no1 if nobody ever buys from you

 

[JonathanSEO]

I have talked to a few companies now and they all seem to have a different slant on the correct marketing route. Some wont touch SEO and some say it's imperative to organically rank. The site is being coded with SEO in mind, so I'm not too concerned about this.

Organic search is one of the biggest revenue generators for a lot of online companies so it's not something I'd ignore.

My initial thoughts were to have a big PPC campaign with a number of other things running - (banner adverts and blogs etc) and let google handle the rest, hopefully creating a decent organic ranking after the 6 months, to be evaluated for the following 6 month plan.

All depends on the industry, if it's low competition then you might be able to rank well with a well optimised site and decent content. But if it's competitive and there's multiple sites vying for the same keywords then you are going to need links to outrank them.

Is this naive though? Would a good maketing company with SEO experience make a big difference in how well we rank? And if so are there any people I should be talking to?

You could put the new site live, see how it goes for a month or 2 and work out if you're happy with how it's going in terms of traffic / rankings.

Then if you think it could be better bring in an SEO to point out any improvements that could be made to both rankings, the site & traffic levels.

It's becoming a minefield especially with SEO. Should all internet marketing companies do some SEO work?

SEO is internet marketing. Anyone that does internet marketing has to have a working knowledge of SEO or practice it to a degree.

--

You can't post your site here as it's the non paid area, but what type of industry are you in?

 

[LondonAndProperty]

You certainly need Organic SEO. As a national company this should happen faster, given you already have brand awareness and thus should attract visitors and links from other sites more easily. The SEO you should target should certainly be "white hat" - i.e. clean, with no dirty tricks that some SEO guys use to rank high quicker.

* Organic SEO will last longer than your PPC budget.

* Google page 1 organic entries are "trusted" much more than paid for adverts at the top.

* PPC can be inefficient if you don't target the right keywords. Organic SEO should get you ranking high for everything from short to long-tail keywords. E.g. for my site LondonAndProperty (dot) com ranks Google #2 for "London and Property" but also Google Page 1 for thousands of search terms such as "viewing checklist" , "highgate area guide" to the very long "how long does it take to buy a house" These 'long-tail' keywords drive 2/3rds of the traffic to my site and are more likely to drive serious traffic (i.e. consumers).

* Real life example: I know of a kitchen company in London, 1 of 4 main suppliers of a certain brand within the M25. They got #1 market share in 3months using PPC, then went to #4 as soon as the PPC keywords they were targeting went up in value and they could only afford 30% as many ads as before.

Good Luck !

 

[JonathanSEO]

It's not Coded that makes or breaks SEO as all modern sites are built with SEO in mind

Have to disagree here, everyday I see sites going live that are built to terrible standards that will never rank because of it.

Building a site so it's search engine friendly is still hugely overlooked by a lot of Web designers. Even if they think they know what they're doing, in many cases, they don't.

 

[directmarketingadvice]

I have talked to a few companies now and they all seem to have a different slant on the correct marketing route. Some wont touch SEO

Maybe they just don't do it? I don't touch SEO, because it's a totally different skill set.

and some say it's imperative to organically rank.

That's not true. It's a good thing, but you can make a lot of money without using SEO.

My initial thoughts were to have a big PPC campaign with a number of other things running - (banner adverts and blogs etc) and let google handle the rest, hopefully creating a decent organic ranking after the 6 months, to be evaluated for the following 6 month plan.

You're unlikely to get good SEO rankings without actual SEO.

My own advice is that you forget SEO for the time being.

Firstly, SEO makes no sense for a site you don't know converts... where you don't know which phrases bring in the sales, and which will probably go through a number of changes as you improve it.

Better to use PPC as the tool to get that data.

Secondly, a profitable PPC campaign brings money into your business. SEO, because it takes time and costs are front-loaded, will initially take money out of your business.

In the early days, do you really want to cut back on traffic because of SEO?

Hope this helps,

Steve

 

[directmarketingadvice]

* Organic SEO will last longer than your PPC budget.

Unless, of course, your PPC is profitable... in which case, the budget replenishes itself, with money left over...

 

[lazypbx]

SEO is longer term, especially for competitive keywords. PPC is short term. Of course PPC helps SEO as search engines will add weight to site which get more traffic.

This is speaking very generally because it's all relative to what your site actually does and what you are trying to sell/achieve. It's quite hard to give comment knowing nothing about your business model.

I would say the most important thing is to manage your campaign effectively, sometimes spending more does not work and you are simply wasting money. What makes web marketing hugely different to traditional advertising is the speed at which you can monitor and adapt your campaign. Don't make the mistake of simple budgeting 'X' then running the same adds blindly for a few months. Stop and rethink if it's not working (and remember sometimes it can't work). £14,000 for a 6 month campaign sounds reasonable but it can be burned very very quickly with nothing to show for it.

My final words are in regard to SEO. Content is king, if you make sure you have relevant correctly formatted content then search engines will find you. If you are competing for popular keywords, then you have your work cut out, use several less popular terms as these will be much easier to rank highly. The world of SEO marketing is full of fud, if you're going to hire someone then I would not start until 2-3 months into your campaign (so you have something to benchmark against) and agree rewards based on targets achieved (keyword ranking).

 

[Bamn]

Hey all,

Many thanks for all of your replies - finding this very helpful.

I thought I'd give you a little further info about the situation without over stepping boundaries etc.

The industry is entertainment - and there are many keywords that generate a lot of traffic involved - but also lots of competition.

Our website is being coded/tagged/and made with SEO as a key by guys that genuinely know what they are doing - but we have no one working links etc. We will have fantastic suitable content (all planned), with constantly updating content on the homepage.

Within the budget ideally we're looking for someone to be involved pushing the SEO links and advising with ways we can improve.

We'd also like someone to run a PPC and 'banner' type advertising campaign for us, also handling our social media side of things.

We'be had quotes from a few companies -

One offered more of an SEO based directions - with results to show, with a little PPC and add running basis!
The other offered more of a marketing campaign running all PPC and Social Media but not really knowing a massive amount about SEO (thinking it'd generate itself with a huge PPC campaign running) - also with results.

Taking both companies to work would seriously deplete the budget we have to work with - leaving only a small PPC budget to play with per month...

Is it un-realistic to expect the best of both worlds?

What sort of figures should we be looking at for someone to handle both sides (SEO and Advertising PPC and non) per month?

Thanks again for all advice!!

Cheers

Tom

 

[SEO Lady]

You can donk £14,000 in under one month on Adwords!

Definitely look at investing in organic SEO as then you won't have to pay for Adwords - having said that for UK-wide organic page 1 depending on how competitive your keywords are and how much your competitors are investing in SEO it will probably be months before you get there.

I'd say invest in both.

 

[ronaldneck]

The world of Pay Per Click (PPC) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is as time-consuming as it is essential to your business. Not a problem if you have a full-time team taking care of your pay per click campaigns and search engine rankings. It’s going to be a chore if you plan to go at it alone, though – and your company cannot afford to not implement these proven online marketing strategies.

 

Both SEO and PPC should be run.

PPC is likely to give instant results.

SEO will give long term benefits to your site.

But if PPC is showing a profit why stop it.

 

[DPOM]

Sirearl summed it up nicely.

Both for sure, and if your PPC is giving a good ROI then you'd never want to stop it.

My advice would be to chose a company that does both - so they can work SEO and PPC together to further your results. By running a PPC and SEO campaign sympathetically theres a wealth of data that can benefit both - likely saving you in the long term.

You mentioned links, of course links are important but just be careful about how your SEO company goes about it - the last thing you want early on in the sites life is unnatural link warnings / penalties from Google.

 

[BusyVids]

Hi Tom, I think you need to be looking at a whole marketing campaign that embraces SEO of your website content, good press releases, a PPC campaign with Adwords and with Facebook, video marketing, banner ads and email marketing. Testing and tweaking will reveal the best possible options for future marketing investment.

 

[Bamn]

Thanks again for all the wonderful and informative replies - all very helpful.

I'm not sure if it's allowed but does anyone have any recommendations of suitable companies we should talk to / or any companies they could recommend and have used in the past that have been good.

We've worked with loosely known as "SEO" companies in the past and they've turned out to be no more than total liars!

It's hard to know who to trust, especially as you're generally judging a company on their homepage. Results are always a bonus - but you never know if they've been gained with 'bad practice' technique etc etc.

Any recommendations of companies that do the whole lot well would be gratefully received!

Thanks to all that have sent replies.

Tom

 

Steve Gibson at http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/forums/member.php?u=4385

Is recommended by many members for PPC.

For SEO there are people on here that can help you,look for recommendations.

PPC and SEO are 2 different skills ,its maybe hard to find them both in one company.IMHO

In general I would go with a single person for SEO as the maximum knowledge is generally in one persons head.

 

[beagle1]

PPC comes down to 1 simple concept.For every £1 spent, you should be getting a return of at least £1.50, if you dont use this strategy you will lose a lot of money very quickly.

PPC has nothing whatsoever to do with SEO, PPC are paid ads, seen all over the top page and down the right hand side of web pages.

Organic SEO is based solely on links received.When google search bots crawl the web, there are several factors that they consider when taking rankings into consideration.

1.Page Rank of a site.( If your competitors have a page rank of 4 or more, you will not out rank them organically, at least not short term anyway ).

2.Your link profile.Where are your links coming from.You want links that are relative to the niche that you are in, this builds trust with Google which in turn will boost your page rank and authority.

3.Social signals.Since the Panda and Penguin updates, more and more emphasis is being put on your sites tweets, Facebook likes,Google plus shares etc.

4.Unique content.Using a bunch of spun crap will get you nowhere.A lot of SEO wannabees out there use tools like The best spinner and kontent machine when, for anyone who knows about link building would tell you that these tools are only useful for tier 2 and tier 3 links.

Your content should have a keyword density of no more than 2% although i would suggest aiming for 1.5-1.75% and make sure you vary your anchor text and include plenty of contextual links.

Make sure your CPC charges are within your budget, i know of keywords that cost £30 per click, so do your research.

As for the guys doing your site saying they have "coded" SEO into your site,there is no such thing.

You can optimise your pages with correct title tags, page title and meta tags ( although Google no longer takes meta tags into consideration when determining ranking factors ) and there are certain wordpress templates that are SEO optimised, but coding it in there, afraid not.

Beagle1

 

[JonathanSEO]

If your competitors have a page rank of 4 or more, you will not out rank them organically, at least not short term anyway ).

Assume you mean Toolbar PageRank. But it's clearly not the case that you can't outrank a site because it has a higher page rank than yours. Check some SERPS for competitive keywords.

On that basis rankings would be based on descending page rank. Considering that it's only updated a handful of times a year it wouldn't bode very well for a new site would it?

 

[beagle1]

Actually, you are wrong on both points.

First of all, you find me a site with a page rank of 0 that is outranking a page rank of 4 or more in a super competitive niche,i.e payday loans, how to train your dog ( and i dont mean Uk, i mean US ) and i will add value to your point.

Your second point about irregular updates is also wrong.

If you subscribe to Matt Cutt's blog ( Head of Google's Spam department and all around SEO Wizard ) you would know that the algorithm updates are to become ongoing and Google could roll them out whenever they feel like it, and not, ( as you mentioned, just a few times a year ).

I understand if you have got your wires crossed, can be easily done.

 

Organic SEO is based solely on links received.

I suspect you may be missing a trick or two.

If your statement were true ,then 99.9% of SEO's are going to be a bit upset.

 

[beagle1]

Would you care to elaborate?

 

[JonathanSEO]

Actually, you are wrong on both points.

First of all, you find me a site with a page rank of 0 that is outranking a page rank of 4 or more in a super competitive niche,i.e payday loans, how to train your dog ( and i dont mean Uk, i mean US ) and i will add value to your point.

Your second point about irregular updates is also wrong.

If you subscribe to Matt Cutt's blog ( Head of Google's Spam department and all around SEO Wizard ) you would know that the algorithm updates are to become ongoing and Google could roll them out whenever they feel like it, and not, ( as you mentioned, just a few times a year ).

I understand if you have got your wires crossed, can be easily done.

Did you really just pick the Payday Loans SERP as one where toolbar pagerank is relevant to your ranking? :| Step away from the keyboard son.

Actually you maybe right in one sense, the higher your pagerank, the lower you will rank in the Pay Day Loans SERP.

I was talking about Toolbar Pagerank updates, they aren't algorithm updates. They are only updated a few times a year.

Google already rolls out algorithm updates when they feel like it, the point of Matt Cutts blog (Head of Google's Spam department and all around SEO Wizard) was that Panda is getting integrated into the algorithm so it's deployed continually over time, not just big updates. Hence they will no longer be announcing them or confirming them.

Anyway, this thread is going the wrong way. The OP wants advice on where to spend his markting budget. Not pagerank.

 

[beagle1]

Toolbar Page Rank???

Do You really think this effects Google's ranking factors:|.Step away from the keyboard son.

From someone who likes to include SEO in your name tag, i would have thought you would at least understand the basic fundamentals.

If you need any advice on anything SEO based let me know.

As for your point about reverse ranking factors,implying that the lower the page rank, the higher you can rank, come on....you know thats ridiculous right???

All Good fun............son

 

[JonathanSEO]

Thanks again for all the wonderful and informative replies - all very helpful.

I'm not sure if it's allowed but does anyone have any recommendations of suitable companies we should talk to / or any companies they could recommend and have used in the past that have been good.

We've worked with loosely known as "SEO" companies in the past and they've turned out to be no more than total liars!

It's hard to know who to trust, especially as you're generally judging a company on their homepage. Results are always a bonus - but you never know if they've been gained with 'bad practice' technique etc etc.

Any recommendations of companies that do the whole lot well would be gratefully received!

Thanks to all that have sent replies.

Tom

Indeed, the link profile on your existing website is pretty ropey so whoever did that were certainly not reputable and were outsourcing to India. You need to avoid them in the future. Wouldn't surprise me if you have a penalty already tbh but thats something for the full site review section.

You need to find an SEO that will try utilise what you have as a business and translate it into links / mentions and social shares.

Pretty much every act you have on your books will have their own website, hundreds of link opportunities right there to get the ball rolling.

Worth remembering the SERPs for this industry are localised too, that will hopefully be factored into the website build for landing pages etc.

 

Toolbar Page Rank???

Do You really think this effects Google's ranking factors:|.Step away from the keyboard son.

From someone who likes to include SEO in your name tag, i would have thought you would at least understand the basic fundamentals.

If you need any advice on anything SEO based let me know.

As for your point about reverse ranking factors,implying that the lower the page rank, the higher you can rank, come on....you know thats ridiculous right???

All Good fun............son

Did you manage to find any unpaid work.:|

"I am looking at the possibility of starting an internship/apprenticeship for a company but i am not sure about how to proceed,i would even consider unpaid work"

http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=294541

 

[Annoying Donkey]

...Matt Cutt's blog ( Head of Google's Spam department and all around SEO Wizard )

Ha ha, Funniest thing I've read all week

 

[Fresh Dimension Media]

PPC comes down to 1 simple concept.For every £1 spent, you should be getting a return of at least £1.50, if you dont use this strategy you will lose a lot of money very quickly.

PPC has nothing whatsoever to do with SEO, PPC are paid ads, seen all over the top page and down the right hand side of web pages.

Organic SEO is based solely on links received.When google search bots crawl the web, there are several factors that they consider when taking rankings into consideration.

1.Page Rank of a site.( If your competitors have a page rank of 4 or more, you will not out rank them organically, at least not short term anyway ).

2.Your link profile.Where are your links coming from.You want links that are relative to the niche that you are in, this builds trust with Google which in turn will boost your page rank and authority.

3.Social signals.Since the Panda and Penguin updates, more and more emphasis is being put on your sites tweets, Facebook likes,Google plus shares etc.

4.Unique content.Using a bunch of spun crap will get you nowhere.A lot of SEO wannabees out there use tools like The best spinner and kontent machine when, for anyone who knows about link building would tell you that these tools are only useful for tier 2 and tier 3 links.

Your content should have a keyword density of no more than 2% although i would suggest aiming for 1.5-1.75% and make sure you vary your anchor text and include plenty of contextual links.

Make sure your CPC charges are within your budget, i know of keywords that cost £30 per click, so do your research.

As for the guys doing your site saying they have "coded" SEO into your site,there is no such thing.

You can optimise your pages with correct title tags, page title and meta tags ( although Google no longer takes meta tags into consideration when determining ranking factors ) and there are certain wordpress templates that are SEO optimised, but coding it in there, afraid not.

Beagle1

Out of curiosity, I've noted in your profile you're an SEO eexpert? There's a lot here that worries me - I haven't got the time (or the inclination) to address them all:

• Where did the statistic at least £1.50 come from? Each clients expectations are different and it's not just about the return on the first order, especially if there's a strong likelihood of repeat business. Surely ROI should take CPA into account?
• There is a correlation between PPC and the Onsite work for SEO. To achieve good quality scores for your chosen Keywords in an Adwords Campaign, you'd cover a fair few areas onsite that can have a positive impact on natural SEO, Page Titles to name but one!
• Organic SEO is NOT solely based on links received. Far from it! Quality backlinks are one of 200+ search signals Google use (and change) within their algorithm. Fresh content, good site structure and internal linking, social media signals - don't these count?
• PR4 - Sorry (as has already been stated), you're wrong. We have clients with PR0 & PR1 websites outranking higher PR websites, simply based on ALL the other signals.
• Yes, there are some Keywords that cost £30.00+ on Google Adwords, but that alone doesn't mean it won't show a client a return. If a keyword is being bid on to that level, maybe it's because it shows a return to those bidding?
• SEO Coded into your website, there is no such thing? Sorry, but there is. Following good onsite SEO practise when developing a new website can bring dividends to some clients, especially in areas of low competition. As Graham has already stated, if a website is constructed properly from the offset, sometimes there is NO further need for any offsite work to be done.

I'm not trying to discredit you, but lot's of small business owners read this website and I just wanted to set the record straight on a few points.


Going back to the original point of the post - with a £14K budget set aside for the first 6 months, the early stages should allow enough time to learn which terms drive the best conversions within Adwords, providing you a much better idea which keyword terms are worth naturally optimising for. Longer term, I'd always recommend (budget permitting) to use a mix, simply as some people will NEVER click on an advert and some people will NEVER trust anything other than what's at the top of the page (which is a Sponsored Link). Just make sure your Google Analytics, Google Webmaster tools are set up correctly and that you ensure conversion tracking is in place and working from day one.

 

[Suzuki]

Beagle1 - go back to reading instead of posting... you're making yourself look quite silly.

 

[open sesame]

You start off with PPC when the website is launched and gather data about what terms convert and which ones don't.

Using that data you can make better decisions regarding what terms you target for SEO.

If done correctly both can drive profitable sales, so go after both if your budget allows.

Personally I always look at PPC first, as someone pointed out if you can find that magical loop where money in outweighs money out then you have something many struggle to find.

Once you get this you can slowly optimise and tweak the account to build while still being profitable, this is your day to day stuff as changes are instant.

In the background you slowly push your SEO, it's a long term thing so shouldn't rush it by trying to build 1000 links a day. Your after a guest post a week from an auth website in your industry, a few quality blog posts, a few social signals going on, slow and steady.

While the marketing team is doing this, your creative guys are looking at CRO smoothing the conversion funnel.

It's a lot easier to double your conversion rate then it is your traffic.

 

[NicholasTaylor]

Yeah, I bit my tongue on everything Beagle1 said - it's almost all complete nonsense.

Business owners, disregard his advice.

 

[seowise]

Hello guys, a great discussion here. I think the asker has already figured out they should address pros and even asked for recommendations. I concur it's a smart move, because there are too many options to waist both time and budget.

Still, that's a great question really. How does a random website owner decide on splitting the budget between SEO and PPC?

I think we should start with calculating - at least approximately - the cost of 1 organic Visit and the cost of 1 paid Visit. Then compare both to see what's more cost-effective. Also compare both costs to revenue per Visit (though it's impossible at the start-up phase) - it might turn out that each Visit brings £3 while the PPC cost of bringing 1 Visit is £15 - than it's not worth it, at least at the current conversion rate.

How do we count the cost of 1 organic Visit? Though I quite agree with Fresh Dimension Media that organic SEO is not solely based on links received, I'd state that links is often the determining factor provided the site is sound in terms of on page optimization, content, site structure and the remaining ranking factors.

Here's how we could count the cost of 1 organic Visit. We'll choose a keyword we want our new site ranking #1 for (or at least in top 10). We'll then choose a site from the first page that we'll view as a role model. The site should be comparable to our project from the 'on the surface' SEO point of view (similar level of content, design, social media exposure). Then we'll look into the backlink profile of the role model site and evaluate the number and quality of links they have. With that in mind, we'll evaluate how long it'll take for an SEO company to build similar set of links - I know it's kind of oversimplifying the SEO process, but it appears a good way to measure the costs.

If you have estimated traffic if ranking #1 for this keyword, the rates of your SEO pro, the approximate pace at which the links will be built, the time it'll take to build the links, you'll know the approximate cost of bringing 1 organic visit.

Same with PPC visits. Take CPC, average CTR (say 7%) and the clicks you get, you'll have a cost per visit.

You have the costs for 1 organic visit and 1 paid visit - you know how to mix them.

Btw, it's very convenient tracking both SEO and PPC metrics in rank tracker - they list both.

Do you think counting SEO and PPC makes sense and is the answer to the question initially asked in this thread?

 

[Annoying Donkey]

If you have estimated traffic if ranking #1 for this keyword, the rates of your SEO pro, the approximate pace at which the links will be built, the time it'll take to build the links, you'll know the approximate cost of bringing 1 organic visit.

I may have misunderstood, but surely you need to take into account all visits resulting from SEO work, not just the first one.

 

[seowise]

I may have misunderstood, but surely you need to take into account all visits resulting from SEO work, not just the first one.

What I meant here was estimated traffic - it's the expected visits column I have in my rank tracker. According to the developers' explanation, it's the estimate of the number of visits you get if ranking #1.

Imagine your site is new, and you don't have any organic traffic yet, but you want to see if your SEO costs will pay off. In this case I suggest taking this estimate into account.

Sure thing, as time goes and the site gets actual organic visits, will take all visits resulting from SEO work.

Thank you for pointing that out, WeblinkPlus!

 

[WebMeUp]

What I meant here was estimated traffic - it's the expected visits column I have in my rank tracker.

By the way, there is the same estimate in WebMeUp and it is called Estimated Traffic. If we know search volume for a keyword in question, then it is possible to roughly calculate how many visitors a site would get if it achieved page one of SERPs.