A common internet marketing question is “Why should I use PPC (pay per click) when I can get free clicks through organic search?”
It’s a fair question, but not a good question since it contains a false assumption: That organic search is “free.” Yes, the clicks you receive on the organic side are free, but getting into position to be clicked (the top half of the first page of the search results) will either cost you time or money- in some cases a lot of time or money.
I use both paid and organic search for all of my own projects, and here are some of the reasons why:
- PPC is fast. It can take weeks or months to get on page 1 of Google for various search phrases on the organic side, depending on the level of competition. In fact, some phrases are so competitive that it would cost you more than it is worth to get there. But with PPC, assuming you have a reasonable website and a page somewhat relevant to your search terms, you can be on page 1 today. Typically, when I want to go after a new set of keywords for one of my own projects, it takes me less than 30 minutes to get my ads showing up on page 1 of Google- or Bing/Yahoo if I should so choose.
- PPC can target thousands of keywords. It is very difficult to optimize any given webpage for more than 3-5 competitive search terms and have it rank high organically. But with PPC, you can quickly get up ads for hundreds or thousands of keywords related to your market.
- PPC is target-able. With a paid search campaigns you can select your keywords, where they up geographically, when they show up, and even in some measure who sees them.
- PPC is track-able. With free Google conversion tracking you can see which keyword searches actually generated leads or sales, and adjust the campaign to be more and more profitable.
- PPC is scalable. If you set up a campaign and discover that for every $10 you spend you make $20, you can begin to raise your budget to buy all the relevant clicks. Since there is only finite amounts of traffic, you will reach a point at which you are buying all the possible relevant clicks, but to that point, more traffic simply means a higher budget. You can also add more keywords to grab every possible related search, and filter those keywords based on which actually generate leads and sales.
- PPC provides the best ideas for organic SEO. If you are going to show up high in the organic search results for a cluster of phrases, which ones should they be? How do you know? The majority of my clients who come to me for SEO either want to show up for phrases that are very broad and excessively competitive (for instance a car dealer who wants to be #1 for “cars”) or for phrases no one is actually looking for. A PPC campaign shows which keywords are being searched for in your target area, and which ones actually generate business. This gives you the best phrases for SEO.
There are likely other answers to the question of “Why use PPC?” but these are the ones that keep me using PPC and encouraging others to do the same. Contact Kelowna Internet Marketing if you want to know more.
#1 by Monex on January 23, 2011 - 2:21 pm
But conventional wisdom also says that if you have strong organic results you do not necessarily need to do paid conversely if you dont have fairly strong organic results you must do it. However for the majority of marketers the question really revolves around whether or not to invest in paid if you start get ting good organic results…While conventional wisdom says that paid search will unneces sarily cannibalize free organic traffic there are merits in favor of maintaining your paid campaign such as greater control of messaging through ad text and landing pages.
#2 by shane on February 12, 2011 - 9:42 am
Great article. I recently signed up for google adwords because of this article alone.
Thanks for the advice,
shane