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View Full Version : PPC Advertising vs. SEO


nick8609
06-14-2010, 07:00 PM
There are two ways to get traffic to any site. You can either get traffic to your website for free, such as SEO or you can use paid advertising; PPC (pay-per-click).

Often, there is a debate and constant warring between which strategy will be the best strategy to implement in exposing your site to the m***es.

In actuality, Internet Marketing is a numbers game, and so the more targeted traffic you can get to your website, the more you will convert, and the more money you’ll make.

So which strategy is the best, free or paid?

Search Engine Optimization:

Free marketing strategies; such as SEO, are just as good as paid marketing, if not better. For example, when the majority of people go searching for information online, they go to Google or any other search engine and type in a phrase; such as “How to Cook and Clean”. The results they get back are divided into two parts, and that is Organic and Paid advertising. These differences are usually easy to identify. The organic results are listed on the left hand side and are listed 1-10 through a series of pages, while the paid are listed on the far right hand side.

When doing a search people will often decide which way is best to resolve their dilemma or situation, and most often people tend to use the free results. Thus, this is enough to indicate that if you want to get highly targeted and free traffic to your website it would be a good idea to get into the Organic results. However, many things are involved, including getting backlinks to your site, making sure you have the right keyword density, and optimizing your site. The downside to Search Engine Optimization is that in order to get your website ranked high, it can be very time consuming. This is a reason why many marketers choose to skip SEO and use Pay-Per-Click with Google Adwords, Bing, or Yahoo Overture.


PAY PER CLICK (PPC):

In short, Pay-Per-Click is when you tell Google; or any other company, how much you want to be charged every time your advertisement is clicked. The higher the amount that you set to be charged will often determine how high your website will rank in the search engines. On the other hand, if you set a low amount then your PPC may not give you good results.

The “pros” of PPC marketing is that it takes a small amount of time to get up and running, but the “con” is that you can not just set up a campaign and expect to make tons of money. PPC is a science and should be implemented with strategy, therefore doing the homework is crucial because if you don’t choose the right keywords and/or charges you could end up losing tons of money and FAST. So PPC takes skill, learning, and possibly experience to succeed.

In short, SEO is a great way for beginners to get a site ranked high in organic results. SEO may be frustrating but once you succeed with SEO the benefits are great. This is also true with PPC, but there is much more risk involved since your success is dependent on your money and skill. Overall, it’s necessary to research both SEO and PPC as much as possible before leaning upon either.

Forum Admin 2
06-14-2010, 09:09 PM
Great post Nick! Thank you for sharing :)

Moderator 1
06-15-2010, 03:59 AM
We appreciate your insight Nick! :)

Jamie
06-15-2010, 09:06 AM
I have not really looked into PPC yet, i had a site selling ugg boots and Google would not let me use PPC because of copyright issues.

Teddy
06-15-2010, 01:32 PM
I have tried Google Adwords before but it didn't quite work for me. Maybe now that I have learnt a bucket load more I might get to that space again.

Thanks
Teddy

Forum Admin 2
06-15-2010, 02:56 PM
This is one area that one should really research the pros and cons of usage before adding to ones site. Not all websites are the same, but it is a great tool to use :)

volybal3
06-15-2010, 03:39 PM
Thanks for the post, this will help many people who
are confused. Thank you for clearing things up. :)

Moderator 1
06-16-2010, 03:02 AM
Pay Per Click advertising is something that you really want to learn the basics at least before diving in. It is a risky business and can empty your bank account quick. Make sure that you keep it capped at an affordable dollar amount and watch it like a hawk. You can always stop it at any time.

Good luck!

TshirtFrank
06-17-2010, 03:03 AM
Hey Nick,

Thanks for the post, I was looking for some PPC conversations to get involved in. PPC can be m***ively profitable if you do it right. One thing that I think that is important to clear up is this quote

"The higher the amount that you set to be charged will often determine how high your website will rank in the search engines."

It is not actually your website that will rank better yet it is the adwords add that you place that will do better.

I have had some pretty awesome results with PPC and they really got my attention to figure it out.

One of the first things that you want to do is to make sure that your page converts well. The very first campaigns that I created were on pages that have been making sales on for months and months. I had the data to tell me that every x amount of people that hit my page will buy something. I also new the keywords that most people were using to find my page. Use those keywords If there is not a lot of adwords competition for those and if your not already ranking in the top few spots, it can increase your sales significantly. --- This is a good way to test the waters.

There is a ton to be said on PPC but another thing you want to make sure of is that you will have a good profit margin. Just use common sense. If your Commission is 5 bucks, you know that you have to get 30 visits before someone buys, and you are spending .15 per click it is not going to be a good investment.

I'm no expert by any means but this may be a good little nugget of info to get your feet wet.

Cheers,

TSF

Forum Admin 2
06-17-2010, 04:20 AM
Thats great information TSF!! Your trial and errors paid off with profit! Thank you for sharing, it will be very helpful to our members :)

Jamie
06-17-2010, 09:20 AM
That's given me a lot of food for thought thanks very much for the help TSF.

Moderator 1
06-17-2010, 09:28 PM
Thank you for sharing TSF and very good explanation. :)

nick8609
06-21-2010, 09:53 PM
@ Teddy

Yes, Google Adwords isn't really recommended for beginners as many accounts have been "slapped" in recent years. To avoid this slap your site's quality score should be dramatically increased. However, Bing also has a PPC program that I have seen better results in.

Forum Admin 2
06-21-2010, 11:19 PM
That's a great tip Nick! Thanks for sharing :)

Jamie
06-22-2010, 08:23 AM
I have also heard that Bing PPC is good but have not tried it yet.

Forum Admin 2
06-22-2010, 05:52 PM
Let us know how this works out for you Nick if you choose to try it. :)