PPC vs Organic

B

bswootton

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Aug 4, 2009
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I've been optimising for a keyword that gets 1,000 local searches per day according to Google tools.

I'm now number 2, with a better title, site and description than the number 1, so would be expecting a good chunk of those 1,000 hits.

However, I've only been getting around 20 visits per day. (2 sets of different analytics confirm this.)

Frustrated, I've just set up a PPC campaign for the same ad, and I can indeed see hundreds of impressions per hour.

As I'm sure the number 1 site isn't capturing all of these surfers, I'm sure it's all of the PPC ads that are capturing the traffic and killing the stream of Organic visitors at source.

Could this be correct? Are the traditional figures about organic vs paid still true today? Do they vary across niches? How to combat this?
 


roboxooo said:
welcome to seo
Click to expand...

QFT!

Yeah, while free sales are always fun with SEO you're always playing second fiddle to PPC ads. The vast majority of people still don't even realise ads exist on the search results page and therefore are click happy for the top results (yellow sponsored).

If you're building a brandable, long term site, then yes there's nothing wrong with having a highly targeted SEO campaign supporting a profitable Adwords campaign, but it should not be the priority.
 
Before I do ANY SEO, I always test them out on Exact Match in Adwords so I can see which keywords get the volume (and convert).
 
I am fairly new at the IM game but if these figures hold true, it completely devalues SEO as a strategy.

What's the point of getting to the top of the Organics if PPC will kill you anyway?
 
bswootton said:
I am fairly new at the IM game but if these figures hold true, it completely devalues SEO as a strategy.

What's the point of getting to the top of the Organics if PPC will kill you anyway?
Click to expand...

SEO is 10x more stable then PPC is. Also, the first listings get most of the traffic on a particular keyword, so TEST them out with PPC and watch your impressions. Then you don't have to waste any time optimizing for bunk keywords.

Also, when you use the Google keyword tool, make sure you set it to "exact match". You'll get much better data that way.
 
Ah - the figures make more sense when I look at the exact match on the keyword tool. Newbie mistake but I may have optimised for a slightly dud keyword :)

Still an interesting discussion though. Is it fair to say there is more love for PPC than SEO on Wickedfire?
 
bswootton said:
Ah - the figures make more sense when I look at the exact match on the keyword tool. Newbie mistake but I may have optimised for a slightly dud keyword :)

Still an interesting discussion though. Is it fair to say there is more love for PPC than SEO on Wickedfire?
Click to expand...

In general, there is little to no point in optimizing for a keyword with 1000 searches per day if you have no idea of the competition on those keywords, and you cannot evaluate properly your odds to make it there with tools like the Google Keyword Tool (tool that was conceived mostly for PPC even though it's great to generate ideas).

You'll need tools like those SEO toolbars for Firefox, for example, to start getting relevant information.

Also, make sure you set your Google Keyword Tool properly. For example if a keyword gets 1000 searches/day in the whole country, but you're only showing up on the first page in your city, of course you'll only get clicks from there. There are also tools to know how you position yourself elsewhere.

Even if it's much more complex than that, you should see SEO like a low risk, long-term investment, (money and time-wise), and PPC like a high risk, short-term investment.

The payback (or loss!) will be extremely quick on PPC (for most products) where it will be much slower with SEO, as you only buy cheap hosting and a bunch of domain names, and you write endless pages of content.

Is SEO crap then? Nah, not at all. One of my relative is now making, after only a few months of hard work, $600/month with Adsense and it keeps increasing. Definately not enough to make a living out of it yet, but in a few months, who knows. The most appealing part is that in half a month all his domain names and hosting are paid and for the rest, there is no investment. As the pages are aging, they only seem to bring more cash, year-long.

Did he start with a crazy pagerank? No. Was any of his site already having a lot of traffic? Zero, those sites are brand new.

All I can say in the end is that SEO takes a freaking long time and is not for every niches or companies out there, but shouldn't be overlooked. PPC will work better most of the times, of course, you pay Google for each and every click and you target all the regions you want. SEO is stable and free, and if done right, will also give really nice results on other search engines for, hopefully, a really long time.

As far as I know, Google bans affiliates on Adwords, but not in the organic search. Things are not looking too bad for them if it keeps going like this. :)
 
matduke said:
In general, there is little to no point in optimizing for a keyword with 1000 searches per day if you have no idea of the competition on those keywords, and you cannot evaluate properly your odds to make it there with tools like the Google Keyword Tool (tool that was conceived mostly for PPC even though it's great to generate ideas).

You'll need tools like those SEO toolbars for Firefox, for example, to start getting relevant information.

Also, make sure you set your Google Keyword Tool properly. For example if a keyword gets 1000 searches/day in the whole country, but you're only showing up on the first page in your city, of course you'll only get clicks from there. There are also tools to know how you position yourself elsewhere.

Even if it's much more complex than that, you should see SEO like a low risk, long-term investment, (money and time-wise), and PPC like a high risk, short-term investment.

The payback (or loss!) will be extremely quick on PPC (for most products) where it will be much slower with SEO, as you only buy cheap hosting and a bunch of domain names, and you write endless pages of content.

Is SEO crap then? Nah, not at all. One of my relative is now making, after only a few months of hard work, $600/month with Adsense and it keeps increasing. Definately not enough to make a living out of it yet, but in a few months, who knows. The most appealing part is that in half a month all his domain names and hosting are paid and for the rest, there is no investment. As the pages are aging, they only seem to bring more cash, year-long.

Did he start with a crazy pagerank? No. Was any of his site already having a lot of traffic? Zero, those sites are brand new.

All I can say in the end is that SEO takes a freaking long time and is not for every niches or companies out there, but shouldn't be overlooked. PPC will work better most of the times, of course, you pay Google for each and every click and you target all the regions you want. SEO is stable and free, and if done right, will also give really nice results on other search engines for, hopefully, a really long time.

As far as I know, Google bans affiliates on Adwords, but not in the organic search. Things are not looking too bad for them if it keeps going like this. :)
Click to expand...


There's always exceptions to that rule, and it is quite possible to rank for a keyword with tons of traffic, bank hard & quick too :)
 
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