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Why
customers need both organic Search
Engine Optimization (SEO ) and
PayPerClick (PPC )
You are sacrificing traffic if you
aren’t targeting customers in both
areas: •80% of the time searchers go
to the organic results first
•65% of search traffic goes to the
top ten search results
•60% of searchers click on paid ads
sometimes while 12% say they click
on them always or most of the time.
Use them
together for the most effective
marketing strategy:
•Organic SEO is a great long term
investment which everyone who is
serious about their website should
invest in, but PPC can start driving
traffic right away. Smart customers
will use this to their benefit—Begin
SEO and PPC at the same time so you
are getting traffic to your site
right away, while you wait for your
organic rankings start to rise. Once
you’ve obtained strong organic
rankings, you can reduce your PPC
spending, but you shouldn’t stop it
altogether.
You should never put all your
marketing dollars in one basket—it’s
too risky. A solid marketing plan
should minimize risks and maximize
impressions:
•If you have high organic rankings
but no paid ads, then you are
letting your PPC-savvy competitors
steal away some traffic from you b/c
a large percentage of potential
customers will click on paid ads too.
•If your organic rankings suddenly
take a dive due to search engine
algorithm changes and you don’t have
a PPC campaign then you are suddenly
invisible in the SERP’s (Search
Engine Results Pages) . Granted you
can start PPC at any time, but if
you aren’t familiar with it, it can
take some time (even for a
professional) to figure out the most-effective
PPC strategy for your site.
•If you only focus on paid listings,
you are missing out on the 80% of
traffic that goes to organic
rankings. Also, research indicates
that many customers put a higher
“trust” level on organic rankings
since many customers are aware that
those ads are paid for. You may find
that your conversion rate for
organic rankings is higher than that
of your PPC campaign.
•If you only focus on paid listings
and suddenly a competitor enters the
PPC market with a big budget that
you can’t compete with, then you are
going to lose your placement and now
you are looking at 3-5 months before
you can counter that with organic
rankings.
Budgeting
PPC and SEO can be combined to offer
an excellent search marketing
campaign. Together they can help to
maximize web traffic, capture highly
targeted visitors, enhance sales,
and generate brand awareness. By
budgeting wisely, you will be able
to use PPC and SEO to their full
advantage.
•For new online storefronts or
websites, PPC will drive traffic to
your site immediately. Based on your
budget, a good strategy will be to
start using PPC advertising, invest
in SEO as soon as you have the funds
to invest in it, and begin to taper
off your PPC advertising as your
organic listings begin to increase.
•From a recent study at the Penn
State School of Information Sciences
and Technology (IST), researchers
found that on more than 80% of
searches, study participants went
first to the results identified as "organic."
Sponsored links were viewed first
less than 10% of the time. A safe
bet is to break down your SEO and
PPC budget into roughly 70-80%
organic SEO and 20-30% PPC. This
will help you drive long-term,
consistent traffic to your site.
•Set a goal for the amount of
traffic you expect to see in a given
day. Then, monitor your traffic
sources using a quality web
analytics program. Turn on
conversion tracking code provided by
PPC engines like Google and Yahoo!.
Information is power. You will begin
to see which form of advertising is
working best for your industry and
your unique situation. When you know
where your traffic is coming from
and which visitors are converting,
you’ll be able to make better
marketing decisions.
•Diversify your efforts. Remember
that the search engine marketing
industry is not limited to these two
forms of advertising. Additional
options such as blogs, press
releases and RSS feeds will help you
take advantage of the fact that
consumers are first visiting search
engines when they are looking to
make a purchase.
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