SEO Tip of the Day: Understanding Google PPC vs SEO Part II
In an interesting aside to the study I cited yesterday, The New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/10/business/media/10drill.html?_r=2&ref=business) suggests that “visitors who get to retail sites through sponsored links are more likely to buy than those who click on organic results.” They also seem to spend more money. Jamie Smith, the chief of Engine Ready, feels as if shoppers may be turned off by the optimization done to make it show up at the top of the search engine results. We all know Google’s spiders are attracted to lots of relevant content and “when we’re optimizing for search engines, content is king,” Mr. Smith said, “but less is more when engaging a visitor.” So it seems as if sometimes what Google wants from the top listings is different from what visitors want. When someone wants to buy, they don’t want to read. They just want to go straight to the product and buy! This may be something to keep in mind when making a decision about one vs. the other.
1. SEO is initially very expensive. Once you have done the initial setup cost of SEO, however, you no longer have to pay for every click. In the long run, SEO is less expensive than continuing with a PPC campaign. After all, SEO has zero cost per click!
2. It takes longer for your efforts to show up with SEO, but once optimization is finished and your website is showing up in the first page of the search results, maintenance costs are minimal.
3. If you do your homework and research the correct keywords (including long-tail keywords), you can drive the traffic you want where you want it to go, even to internal pages. SEO is time intensive but works really well if done correctly.
4. When asked, most people will say they trust and pay attention to main listings more than paid listings. Also, 80% of people click on the top three organic links on a search engine results page.
There are several things to think about when deciding upon a PPC or SEO campaign. I think the best thing to do, for a new site especially, is a combination of both PPC and SEO. You can start off a new website with PPC since you won’t have the domain age or the indexing of pages. You can optimize and add pages, either via a blog or regular web pages, and continue with the PPC while you’re waiting for your optimization efforts to work. PPC is a good way to test keywords before optimizing for them to see what people are clicking on. The keyword might not do as well as anticipated and you can then eliminate that keyword in your future optimization efforts. SEO analytics can also be used with PPC – a keyword in your statistics that someone is searching for (that you had not thought of or anticipated) could be put into PPC to capture those particular customers. You can also use PPC for long-tail and inexpensive keywords and optimize for the more expensive PPC keywords.
You can see that it is not really a matter of Google PPC vs. SEO. Both can be done to strategically optimize your site and keep your costs down. It’s a matter of what will work best for your website, your budget, and your marketing strategy.