SEO Strategies
Search Engine Marketing – In a Funk?
Weighing PPC vs. organic search by Lisa Wehr
Jan 27, 2004
It’s hot, it’s now, it’s en vogue, and if you’re not participating you’re missing out.
No, I’m not talking about the latest fashion in swimwear or sports cars. I’m referring to the best way of promoting your business, reducing advertising costs and increasing return. Sound too good to be true? Read on.
The major search engines are THE undisputed gateway for consumers and researchers looking for information online and THE primary path for leading them to their ultimate destinations. We’re all aware of their importance when it comes to generating revenue online so let’s get right down to the options you have when promoting your company and/or its products. In a nutshell you have two: Pay-Per-Click (PPC) and Natural Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – both of them designed to position your website in front of your potential customers. Business to business or business to consumer, it makes no difference; its imperative that you’re visible. Mind you, there is no free ride so make your decisions wisely.
Pay-Per-Click - break it down
Pay-Per-Click is a perfect solution, or so it would seem. There are a number of minor players, but the top two engines offering this form of marketing visibility consume over 90% of the market share. Love them or not, meet Google and Overture.
In the case of Google’s AdWords program, ads appear on the right side of natural search results in small colored boxes. Perform a search for “vintage furniture” and you’ll see a number of advertisers vying for consumer eyeballs. These same companies must participate in the “jockey for position ballet” to get them. Each time your ad is clicked, a potential buyer will be directed to your site and you’ll pay your bid amount (up to $50.00 per click). Sounds lovely. Google makes money for delivering a pre-qualified visitor to your site and you make money whenever one of those visitors converts to a buyer. Where’s the down side?
As with most things good, evil lurks. Bid costs continue to rise in all market segments and less than savory competitors have discovered they can inflict pain anonymously by clicking on their competitor’s ad. Both Google and Overture claim to have safety nets in place to prevent fraudulent clicking, but the nets aren’t fool proof and most advertisers cannot detect when they have been violated.
In the case of Overture, the same pitfalls apply, however the network of sites displaying their advertiser listings is an even bigger drawback. I won’t go into great detail here but suffice to say that if your ad is designed to promote your California vintage furniture store, it may not be the best form of promotion to display that ad on a site located in Brazil - encouraging Brazilians to click on it. The cost can be monumental, and as of this writing, Overture does not offer a way to target your ads only where you want them.
Note that PPC is a media buy, not natural Search Engine Optimization. It’s a marketing channel like others requiring pay to play. Once you stop paying for clicks your listings disappear immediately.
Pay-Per-Click - what a tangled web
Google AdWords ads appear not only on the Google search engine but Google has also inked deals to serve their ads on AOL, AskJeeves and Earthlink as well. Overture’s anchor tenants include Yahoo!, AltaVista, MSN, CNN and InfoSpace, along with thousands of small sites in and outside the US. In the race for market share, these two engines are at risk of diluting the effectiveness of their advertising product. In the case of Overture, you the advertiser have no customization controls letting you choose where your ads will appear. At this time, if you’re advertising on Overture, you’re advertising in Iran, India, Brazil, and literally hundreds of sites that you otherwise would choose not to advertise on. In the search engine game, it’s all about relationships.
Another form of PPC that has recently gained in popularity is the XML feed. The XML feed was originally designed for large catalogers with thousands of pages of content within their sites – pages that a search engine cannot index due to their dynamic nature. Anxious to ride the profit train themselves, a few of the search engines including AskJeeves, Fast, and Inktomi created a way to include these pages in their databases through a back-door. These engines set the PPC amount that you’ll pay rather than bidding against your competitors. Notice I didn’t mention Yahoo!, AOL, MSN and Google here – that’s because they don’t offer XML feeds at this time. We have written a detailed white paper on this topic, information is located at the end of this article.
Pay-Per-Click - on the up side
For companies that need an instant source of traffic, have rotational products affected by seasonality, thousands of SKUs or money to burn, this may be the perfect gig for you. If you’re a smaller company with a tight budget or a small number of products, it may NOT be the best alternative. Factor fraudulent or off-target clicks as a “cost of doing business” and if the numbers work then you are likely to find this a very plausible form of promotion.
PPC is ideally suited for new product launches or promotions with a short shelf life. I view its long-term use as comparable to a bad addiction. Imagine basing the success of your company solely upon the amount you’re willing to bid against your most aggressive competitors for each visitor to your site. Get the picture?
While it may look simple at face value, PPC carries with it a complicated strategy involving the proper ad creative and bidding process requiring constant management to get the most from each dollar spent (ROI). It’s a dog-eat-dog playing field with each participating company feeling as though they are more deserving than their competitor. The bidding war ensues resulting in enough nitro to blow your profit margin sky high. Do your research carefully and read the help files found within the Google and Overture websites. Monitor your clickthroughs and conversion percentages to make sure you’re getting the most for your money. Those of you who don’t have the time to manage a campaign of this nature should consider consulting with a search engine marketing firm that does.
Natural Search Engine Optimization – the golden child
When a child is born we don’t tell him to start earning a living and send him into the world. Think of your website much the same way (without the college tuition part). The most overlooked first step in successful online marketing is neglecting to set aside a budget for it. Great web developers oft times have no idea how to create or prepare a site in such a way that the major search engines like it. Meet the professional search engine marketing firm. A company with proven methods and technology that can help with anything search marketing related, whether it be PPC or natural search engine optimization (SEO). While this may seem a self-serving plug, these specialists know their stuff and can save you lots of time and money while dramatically flattening the learning curve for you. Those of you who wish to go it on your own, there are great resources that I’ve mentioned at the end of this article.
How many times have you typed in a search at Google for keywords related to your business? Let’s use the vintage furniture example. You’re the storeowner; you visit Google and type in “vintage furniture.” Hmmm…there are 1.5 million listings returned and yours is located in the deep end. How can that change? Natural search engine optimization (SEO). In a nutshell, your site can be optimized (prepared) in such a way that when a search engine displays results for related keywords, your site rises to the top. Each site has its own unique set of needs, determining yours will take an experienced set of eyes. Suffice to say that at the very least, proper optimization will include market research, site analysis, keyword identification, submission to the engines, reporting and ROI tracking.
Back to our example. Now imagine our vintage furniture store appearing within the top 3-5 natural search engine listings when a shopper searches for “vintage furniture.” The odds of you selling your product have just increased more than a thousand fold, and to a much larger targeted audience than if your ad were appearing only in the PPC section. The best part is that you don’t pay for each click nor does your listing disappear because you’re not.
Natural Search Engine Optimization – better than the stock market
Invest in yourself; invest in your business and its longevity. Natural SEO is a long-term investment in your site and the future of your company. It’s the logical next step of prepping your site for engaging in online battle. If you’re listed high in targeted search results, your sales will be higher and so will your profit margin, brand recognition, customer loyalty and so on. If you’re not there, not only are your sales going to be stagnant, your loyal customers won’t be able to find you and will likely switch camps to your more visible competitors. Your absence in the place that your customers are expecting to find you is a huge letdown to them and one you may never recover from.
Costs for SEO vary depending upon a number of criteria - in general, a professional, top-tier SEO firm will charge between $20,000 and $200,000 per year. You can do it yourself or you can outsource, nonetheless it’s critical that it get done and done well. Expect to engage a professional firm for at least 12 months. This period of time will gain you online visibility and free up your internal resources to concentrate on growing your business. During this time you can also expect to learn about the process and how to better prepare your site as it grows and changes in the future. It is commonplace for a company’s conversion rates to grow 400-1,000% once they have incorporated sound SEO – not a bad investment in any light.
The Options – boiling it down
None of the options I’ve presented are painless; they all involve a cost and varying degrees of work on your part. All in all the best approach is one with diversity; you know the old saying about all your eggs in one basket. First step, natural optimization. Second step, fill in the gaps with PPC. If you’re already participating in PPC, I would bet that you’re looking for a way to reduce your monthly spend. If that’s the case, seek out a good search engine marketing firm to help you. Search engine marketing is a challenge with huge returns once you get those ducks lined up.
Have a good journey and enjoy the ride.
For More Information
More in-depth articles on a variety of search engine marketing topics are available free of charge from the Oneupweb site located at www.oneupweb.com - click on “White Papers”.
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“Free Consumer’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization”
“The Changing Face of Overture's Pay-Per-Click - Where's the Profit?”
“XML Feeds - They're Not for Everyone”