To my dismay, I have heard several stories this year about companies who are regularly spending hundreds or thousands, or even $10,000’s every month on their Pay-Per-Click advertising (PPC) and they actually do not even know what their return on investment is.
Seriously, they have no idea. They might even have a person in the marketing department who handles that or a professional company who manages it for them. And they still can’t tell me what their sales conversion rates are and if they are happy with their PPC campaigns.
I have nothing against Google Adwords and Remarketing technologies. Some people really succeed with those strategies, and there are often good fits for using those methods of marketing.
But if you are participating in PPC and not getting any return, it is just money being thrown out the door and into the wind.
Instead, the business should consider channeling that marketing budget toward a quality SEO campaign that is a complete package, fully tracked, and with a long-term result.
SEO is different than PPC because it can keep working for you long term. As soon as you turn off your PPC ads, they go offline. That’s it. No more visibility. And when you turn them on – poof – there they are immediately again.
SEO strategies take more time to implement and get results, but the results are astounding organic results – results that stay on Google, Yahoo, and Bing over the course of weeks, months, and maybe even years after your campaign is over.
Is it important to keep an eye on your SEO after your campaign is over? Of course, because remember that your competitor can catch up to you. They might wise up and hire a great SEO expert and go up in rankings after you stop your campaign. But that takes time and must be done well to compete with your quality SEO results, once they are established. For this reason, we do recommend evaluating your SEO rankings, your conversion and bounce rates, and search engine saturation regularly.
When WEBii manages an SEO campaign, we recognize that tracking component as well. It is vital for us to regularly run a ranking report and regularly analyze shifts in traffic coming to the website from search engines, from referral websites, and from direct visits. We help the customer understand the data and track changes with month-to-month comparisons, large website content changes, or maybe an end-of-quarter review.
Have you talked to a business owner recently who mentioned their oblivious battle with Google Adwords? Are they lost and uncertain if they should continue? Please share your comments!
View Comments (4)
This is so true, if you're spending more than a few hundred dollars a month on paid search you will want to get a tracking system in place to measure your return on investment. And great points on SEO too, organic search efforts are more important and rewarding than paid search. Keep in mind though that most larger businesses are using paid search as a part of their strategy. A classic example is to use PPC to guarantee top positioning for a branded search term like the business name. Another good use is filling in for search terms that the site ranks poorly for organically. The web sure isn't a "set it and forget it" medium -- ongoing monitoring, measuring, and adjusting is needed to succeed long-term.
Thanks, Bear. Great point about branding with PPC. Companies often forget that their competitors are actually bidding on keywords for their own business name to get visibility.
I can't tell you how many companies I run across who are doing exactly this - throwing money at PPC because someone, somewhere told them they "should" - or more likely, because of that $100 coupon to get started with Google Adwords!
The saddest part is, these are often the same companies who tell me they have no budget for creating great content for their blog, social media or an email newsletter - all activities that will have a much more permanent impact on their visibility than PPC ads! Thanks for helping get the word about about the power of SEO!
Hear hear, Jenny! Google Adwords can be a great tool, but those freebie coupons can also catch a small business owner off guard - they tend to forget they signed up, stop tracking the campaign and leave it running. Before they know it, they might have a bill from Google. Yet another solid reason to track your advertising!