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PPC & Organic SEO
July 27, 2005
I hear from advertisers all the time on how important it is to do Pay-Per-Click and see first hand how organic SEO is still being ignored by some of them. Yes, PPC search traffic is very important for increasing the number of qualified visitors to a website and really is the closest thing to instant gratification when it comes to getting good traffic to a website in a very short timeframe. By all means, PPC campaigns are critical to maximizing overall market share and SHOULD be utilized indefinitely as long as the ROI is intact.
What about the organic SEO side of things? Doesn't it make sense to focus a good chunk of your budget on driving potentially even more qualified search traffic to a website in natural search? Seeing how organic search listings are clicked on 60-70% of the time with PPC listings being clicked on the other 30-40%, it only makes sense to go after the natural search traffic while leveraging PPC campaigns.
What Intrapromote has found is that the most successful search engine marketing campaigns are with clients that utilize both Natural and PPC strategies. By utilizing both PPC and organic SEO, companies are focused on capturing 100% of the their targeted traffic potential as opposed to only going after the 30-40% of clickthrough potential associated with PPC listings.
PPC is a great way of impacting bottom lines, but for some of the marketers out there, you’re still only about 30-40% of the way to maximizing your returns.
see all posts by Sean Bolton
posted by Sean Bolton at July 27, 2005 08:36 AM
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Comments
Right.
While achieving a balance, technically, is a good goal in all facets fo business and life, sometimes it's not possible.
I've run campaigns for folks in industires now excluded from running PPC campaigns, thus forcing a focus on organic rankings.
I'd suggest that many times when businesses focus only on PPC, it's because, quite simply, they either don't have in-house talent to tackle optimization for organic placements, or they do not want to spend the money on outside help to tackle the organic side of things.
The only thing I can say, after years in this field, is I truly hope the person/people handling the PPC campaign are putting hours a day into testing, tracking and optimizing. If not, PPCs can be a faster waste of funds than most other forms of online advertising - I've done them all, too, so I speak from experience.
Focusing on organic placements helps you not only maximize the current outlay of expenses in payroll - making sure you're getting the most from in-house experts - but also ensures your site has been built to cover the basics, which too many sites overlook for the latest and greatest gee-gaws.
Ogranic placements are a relatively low-cost, relatively easy way to increase targeted traffic - easy to pitch to the boss, easy to gets funds for and like gold when they kick in.
In the end, many cannot see the forest for the trees - keyword research - that's the starting point. Always has been, always will be.
Posted by: duane at July 27, 2005 12:36 PM