Archive for the ‘SEO vs PPC’ Category

With Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), the best strategy is always to pick the most generic keywords with the highest traffic volumes and the most expensive cost-per-clicks. All SEO traffic is completely free so you want the keywords that generated tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of searches each day. In some PPC campaigns, you can expect to pay upwards of 20 pound per click — so you can see how SEO can very quickly pay for itself and be very profitable, indeed. It is a good idea to use a good Keyword Tool when you are coming up with keyword ideas and to look at their historical search volumes. The keywords with the most searches are the ones that will really make your Search Engine Optimisation campaign pay.

If your company sells trampolines, for example, your most valuable keyword won’t be “10 foot trampolines” or “trampolines with safety enclosures”, it will be “trampoline” or “trampolines”. You need to be broad and non-specific. You need to be greedy with your SEO keywords and get as many free clicks as you possibly can. You can even put a monetary value on this. Let’s say the average cost per click for the keywords “trampoline” or “trampolines” is one pound for position 2 in the search results and there are 5,000 impressions per day. This would mean that your SEO campaign could be getting you 5,000 pounds worth of free traffic each day and 150,000 pounds worth of free traffic per month.

Of course, an internet marketing effort cannot rely on five or six popular keywords. Search Engine Optimisation should always be supported by a PPC campaign to target the more specific, long-tail searches. These won’t have as many impressions, but that can be good. They won’t spend ridiculous sums of money each day and often the more qualified search terms with 3, 4 or even 5 keywords are more valuable. This is because the search engine user knows precisely what they are looking for and, if you can offer it to them, it is likely to lead a conversion or a sale. Indeed, there has been a lot of debate about what is better SEO or PPC, but the truth is they work better together instead of choosing one or the other. Two other important points worth mentioning: You can cover your entire product catalogue with a PPC campaign (it is unrealistic to SEO tens of thousands of keywords) and at the same time quickly update prices and product information in ad text.

In addition, with the high volume SEO keywords we discussed before, it is good to have a PPC ad in a low, cheaper position on the first page. As before, they support and compliment each other as the user can see two ads from your company in the search results. Doubling your exposure in this manner can make your company look like a major player in the world of search advertising.

Here we go again, another blog article written about the positives and negatives of Search Engine Optimisation and Pay Per Click Marketing. At SEO Consult we have two specialised departments that deal with both industries, so it’s easy to give a balanced argument to which is more beneficial for a given website.

I will approach this bearing three aspects in mind; industry, content and budget. These factors are considered, otherwise it would turn into another rant about how expensive PPC is and how slow SEO is.

Firstly industry dependant, PPC can sometimes be substantially more cost-effective. If you’re product is high profit, you will be able to afford a relatively high cost per conversion and therefore intermittent advertising would be enough as any investment made would be recouped. SEO has long timeframes, and therefore requires continued investment so may not be as appropriate.

On the other hand if you have a niche product and need to make a lot of sales to make a profit, optimising your most important pages (home and main products) then SEO is far better and would be better for brand building, leading to more returning customers and thus making more sales.

If your website has little or no content then it will never succeed in the organic search results, with PPC as long as you have relevant landing pages it really doesn’t matter what you have or don’t have on the page. Even if you have just a one page site, theoretically you can still have a successful PPC program. This is again a short term measure, if your CPC (Cost per click) is continually rising, as we have seen with nearly all Google advertising, then SEO becomes more of a realistic option.

Finally budget. Ultimately, if you have a large or unlimited budget then you can afford to undertake both Pay Per Click and Search Engine Optimisation. Rationally this is not the case for 99% of UK businesses – you need to truly evaluate the long term strategy and estimations of your company. Search Engine Optimisation is an investment which done correctly will never be wasted, more importantly once you achieve top listings you won’t drop out if you can’t afford to continually pay for it. With PPC once you stop, you drop.

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