Pay Per Click (PPC) vs Organic SEO? Which is Best?

MoeTamani — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 23:03:18 +0000

Pay Per Click (PPC) vs Organic SEO? Which is Best?

internet marketing Articles from Moe Tamani, the SEO Services Consultant.

Google adwords and its pay per click (PPC) has made many garage based business grow to full fledge businesses. But is google adwords and its pay per click program a viable solution for all businesses? well not ways…

I have nothing but love for PPC but I have reservation about how businesses use it and more importantly become dependant on it to run their business.

There is one major reason why I prefer organic SEO to pay per click: the trend of the PPC cost is going nowhere but to the roof. With More businesses going online to grab a piece of the pie so does the demand for that sponsored ad space. It goes without saying that high demand means higher pay per click cost. In certain industries that cost goes up to $15/click. Ok… so does that dismiss the use of Pay Per Click advertizing? The answer is no… there are several scenarios where PPC should and should not be used:

The 80/20 rule
Remember that the same rules applies in pay per click 80% of your budget will go towards 20% of the keywords you are targeting. I say it makes sense to free your business for that budget dependancy. Promoting your business organically for those keywords will be a smarter investment than depending on the sky rocketing cost of PPC.

Organic SEO vs Pay Per Click
Pay Per Click to test the waters
One way to really gage the potential response and demand for a product is by running an SEO campaign. Run over a period of 3 months or so will give you a very good idea of what keywords are researched, from what parts of the country, what is the click through rate and conversion rate among other business intelligence data.
Use Pay Per Click for low competition keywords and for non core competitive Keywords
It does not make sense to deplete your pay per click budget in terms that are most relevant to your business. Your most relevant keywords are going to be the costlier. To position your business as a leader you need to show up on the first rankings… Organic rankings, besides being the most cost effective strategy, will also yield higher conversion rates.
Make up for sudden loss of search engine rankings
“Hey Moe what happened to the rankings today the phone stopped ringing!” My phone rings off the hook everytime google goes through an update… That is a great time to jump start that phone with a ppc campaign while the rankings stabilize.

SEO Buy-In: 3 Reasons to Start Early

MoeTamani — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 21:49:41 +0000

SEO Buy-In: 3 Reasons to Start Early

internet marketing Articles from Moe Tamani, the SEO Services Consultant.

There’s a common misconception that SEO is an after-market enterprise. Many businesses choose to consult with SEO companies only after their websites are built, after their marketing campaigns are designed, and after everyone else involved in marketing strategy has built a consensus with one another. The problem with that is that SEO becomes exponentially more difficult once websites are built and strategies are concretized. It becomes both more costly and more time-consuming for the SEO expert and the business. If management instead made SEO a part of the conversation from the very beginning, seeking buy-in from all departments and interested parties before anything else happened, SEO could potentially be a relatively simple and hassle-free process. Here are some other reasons to consider SEO while your business is still on the ground floor.

1. SEO Education
When an SEO expert is brought in early, he or she has the opportunity to educate project managers and all other vendors on the process of SEO. He or she can talk about the importance of things like URL structure, site architecture, and functionality issues. Many project managers and other vendors may not understand how those things affect search engine friendliness, and they will be much more likely to do things the “right way” the first time if they understand why they’re doing it the way they’re being asked to do it.

Some of your employees may also wonder why your business is choosing to do organic search engine marketing rather than Pay Per Click (PPC) since PPC is less time-consuming and provides increased traffic faster. After all, why go through all the trouble of natural SEO if there’s a more efficient way to increase traffic and sales? Be sure to explain the drawbacks of PPC while explaining the advantages of organic SEO. These concerns and questions are valid. Be sure to address them thoroughly.

2. SEO Training
If the website is built to be search engine friendly from the very beginning, then content managers and site maintainers can be trained how to update regularly with fresh and relevant content. On-site optimization then becomes a regular part of site maintenance. If you design the website without SEO and then redesign it for optimization purposes, you will then have to retrain your content managers.

3. SEO is a Top-Down Commitment
In order to make SEO work for your business, you simply must have commitment to the process on every level, and no level is more important than the highest. If your highest executives and managers don’t buy in to the process then you’re simply not going to get anyone else to buy in either. The most important thing you can do is to let everyone know the advantages of considering SEO from the very beginning of your building process. Each person who has a vested interest in SEO should understand how crucial it is to have a website that is search engine friendly and optimized.

SEO is a time-intensive, labor-intensive, meticulous process that you can either choose to do with existing employees or by hiring an outside agency. The most important thing to remember is that SEO should be in the forefront of your mind and on the table during every conversation as you plan your website and your marketing strategies. You’ll end up costing yourself even more time and energy in the long run if you choose to worry about SEO after you’ve taken care of everything else. Taking everything apart and putting it back together after optimization can cost you traffic and sales, neither of which any business can afford to lose. Educate and train your employees, and do whatever it takes to get buy-in as you start the process. You’ll love the results you see.

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Pay Per Click (PPC) vs Organic SEO? Which is Best?

SEO Buy-In: 3 Reasons to Start Early