Do You Favour SEO or PPC?

[boxfish]

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Which one do you tend to use most on your sites?

When I started working online with an ecommerce site around 2 years ago I believed that getting the top spots for my keywords would be the key to my success.

I ran PPC in the meantime and worked at getting the organic rankings.

Now that I've sampled both I must say I do prefer PPC.

1. PPC gives instant results

2. PPC can get you the most traffic

3.You control PPC, you can't control the serps

4. Google is constantly tweaking it's page to increase the CTR of paid results, and reduce the ctr of the organic listings.

5. PPC isn't prone to algorithm changes and fluctuations

I've always been a fan of SEO as it was 'free' compared to PPC but can really see the benefits of PPC these days.

Also with it not being in Google's interest to send clicks to organic results then surely having a site which is profitable from adwords offers more long term stability.

What are your thoughts, which do you favour?

[etaxportal]

Still, natural search engine optimization usually gives much higher return on investment than pay per click. This is true because more searchers click the natural search engine results rather than the pay per click ads.
But the biggest drawback of natural SEO is the time required to generate the results.

[findlite]

4. Google is constantly tweaking it's page to increase the CTR of paid results, and reduce the ctr of the organic listings.

They are fighting a losing battle - unless they start pretending PPC adverts are actually organic and hiding them in the same way other search engines do people will always try and click organic listings.

Even my mother doesnt click the first 3/4 links now she knows they are adverts and not "real" websites.

As for my personal experience - PPC is great and so is SEO..... they should go hand in hand .

[whiteknight]

Going back to boxfish's original post though I'd have to agree. A site that is profitable via PPC will always be profitable. It doesn't matter that 'more people click organic', the fact is that if the PPC campaign can turn a net profit, then as boxfish says, surely it is more sustainable than organic?

Organic rankings are always prone to change, PPC will generally remain constant - and a constant profit always sounds good to me!

That's exactly the strategy I'm employing moving forward; PPC-powered sites. I have one fairly profitable PPC site generating good revenue for me at the moment and a couple of organic sites generating me money but not as much as the PPC site.

I like how I can leave the PPC campaign alone for an entire month and still turn a profit at the end of the month.

With organic sites I'm always worried that my SERPs will drop...organic is great because it is free and drives traffic but it makes you pull more hair out than a well structured, profitable PPC campaign and I guess that's why most of us are in this, right? Less stress - more money - hut on desert island

[findlite]

Less stress - more money - hut on desert island

Ill bring me deck chair..... Have you got wi-fi or should i bring my dongle?....

(-:

[KirstyM]

Going back to boxfish's original post though I'd have to agree. A site that is profitable via PPC will always be profitable. It doesn't matter that 'more people click organic', the fact is that if the PPC campaign can turn a net profit, then as boxfish says, surely it is more sustainable than organic?

Organic rankings are always prone to change, PPC will generally remain constant - and a constant profit always sounds good to me!

Ooh... I agree with some of what you're both saying there. Specially the bit about PPC campaigns being able to be left alone! However I've worked in a lot of PPC niches where the entrance of a large new business has increased click costs so much that it's no longer affordable to compete in the space.

Since aggressively investing in organics I've seen my cost of sales decrease, giving me a much better profit margin. By investing in content and links I'm spending money on something that will continue to add value to my business on a monthly basis. PPC is a one off burn and doesn't help you build a resource and really build that ongoing income.

I still rely on PPC to jump start just about anything I'm working on, but my strategy is to then add organic traffic. Most of my sites are now 80% organic and 20% PPC (except some of the new ones). In the longer term, organic traffic will deliver far greater volumes than PPC too meaning I can really maximise my earnings in the niches I operate in.

And have any of you been looking into all the bannings that are happening with Adwords? Gives me the willies!! By having both earning me good money I feel a little bit "safer".

In short - I think both are key, but organics will really add value in the longer term.

[whiteknight]

I've worked in a lot of PPC niches where the entrance of a large new business has increased click costs so much that it's no longer affordable to compete in the space.

Ah, yes, I forgot to consider this properly. I guess this particular aspect escaped me because in this scenario, the campaign in question wouldn't be classed as a PPC campaign that 'worked'. I've actually been through this exact thing recently with my breakfast bar stools site, where wider PPC keywords do not justify the cost, eg. kitchen bar stools - in some cases, this extends to product names too, where a minimum CPC for something like 'bombo bar stools' can cost anywhere up to 10p.

As an affiliate, this kind of cost is way too expensive for the conversion rates I anticipate I'd get and the commission amount realisable.

Perhaps there's an argument here to try wider longtail keywords 'red kitchen bar stools', exact matching, but even at 2-3p per click; with a 4% commission rate on £39.99, I'd need to convert every 53 clicks to break even...

In this case, the margin is too tight for PPC which leaves no option but to go organic.

But then to support my earlier comment, even if I were to achieve an avge cpc of 3p and was able to convert ever 50 visitors, I wouldn;t class this PPC campaign as 'working'. Why not? I guess my arbitrary measurement for whether or not I view a campaign as working or not would be if it realised at least £100 gross profit...eg, spend £100, bring in £200.

Now..if only I could get into a mindset where I shift my focus to spend £100 on organic stuff each month, I think I'd go with Kirsty on this one and say it may well reap far greater rewards than a quick win PPC campaign...as long as Google didn't change

[KirstyM]

...as long as Google didn't change

And that's the mantra every affiliate in the land chants at bedtime

[boxfish]

And that's the mantra every affiliate in the land chants at bedtime

It's in Google's interest to change though.

As 'Google' is now a household name and also a widely used verb, it no longer needs to rely on it's initial purpose, which was 'to provide the most relevant results' to attract users, it has all the users it needs, the next is to maximise profits.

If the organic results aren't providing any profit then why would google keep them?

They have already monetised the top of the page and the sidebar.

Not happy with this they have:

added sitelinks to adwords
added product images to adwords
brought the adwords closer to the organic results
tested different background colours on the adwords

all the above have been done to increase clickthrough and maximise revenue.

Then they have started looking at monetising the local results by having paid, guaranteed listings. This is in effect mixing paid results in with the organic results, something iirc they said they wouldn't do.

I personally think in the not too distant future there will be some kind of 'site review' charge imposed, whereby sites need to pay to be checked before they are eligible to display on Google, or to achieve first page results a site needs to be manually checked to make sure it passes their 'quality guidelines'.

This isn't a google-hate post, I just think it shows the direction in which things are going and why having a site which is also profitable with PPC is a good thing to have.

All us affiliates are getting traffic, testing, analysing and refining to maximise income. That's just what google are doing. You wouldn't stick a non-affiliate link in pride of place on your homepage, why should they?

[pokerhero]

PPC is effective when you need quick traffic but not good from any small to medium business.

SEO is always take a long time for you to optimize your site and get a better rank on the search engine for a certain keywords. Others lay their foundation with SEO, link building and maybe even some social media marketing.


I love both method..

[boxfish]

I found a link yesterday which emphasises the point I was trying to make about Google constantly trying to improve CTR on paid ads.

Google have now introduced a rating system into adwords for ecommerce sites. This means that paid adwords advertisers can have very attractive star ratings now.

Having visible ratings should increase CTR for paid ads quite dramatically I would think.

Anyone disagree?

Introducing seller rating extensions on Google.com - Inside AdWords

[Tobman]

"And have any of you been looking into all the bannings that are happening with Adwords? Gives me the willies!!."

Surprised there hasn't been more discussion on this in the past year or so...

[quids4free]

Personally I've been really disappointed with the level of click fraud through AdWords banner ads, I run both text and banner but the results I see from banner advertising across the "display network" are pretty dire, it's resulted in me excluding 90% of the sites that were showing the banner ads. After just running for a few rather expensive days at the start of the campaign click fraud levels appeared so high that I queried Google on this (our click tracking for instance showed clicks coming from consecutive IP's just seconds apart that we were paying for in the same C-class e.g. x.x.x.1, x.x.x.2, x.x.x.3 and appearently Google's "advanced fraud detection" didn't figure this out). On submitting this information to the clickfraud team we received confirmation that it was fraud (and over 50% of our total clicks in the first 4 days were) and are awaiting a refund, they did suspend the fraudulent site at least but it doesn't give much confidence.

Results from our text advertising seem much more genuine but as mentioned in competitive niches the costs can really be quite steep, I'm looking at £2.50+/click.

[thelongroadtomoscow]

I would argue a pretty convincing case that the only profiteers from Adwords are Google.

Given the market saturation in most areas along with illogical bidding by newbies and the high CPC by "having to be number one at all costs" as well as the non transparent algorithm and a multitude of factors (don't get me started) unless you niche with considerable research (which generally means low volumes, even aggregated) you'll run a loss.

Yes maybe Auntie Mabels Organic Produce Store in Big City may make a profit.... but its a niche. Even then I hear of many small businesses simply giving up on Adwords (even with judicious KW research) - Big Business in a Big Sector? Forget it.

I would be interested to hear of anybody that consistently turns a profit (cpc/ctr/conversions% would be nice).

[john924]

I prefer SEO as it's free. But realistically the way to do this is to do SEO for your website, get traffic and work with that traffic. See how much it converts and see how much each unique earns you. If a unique is earning you $0.40 on average, then to gain more customers, you may as wells do some ppc and test that. Pay something like $0.10 to $0.20 per visitor and hopefully you still will gain $0.20 profit back from each one plus don't forget you may get some returning and then some may link to your website giving backlinks and helping further with your SEO.