About Web Development by Activo

Since the days that Overture mastered PPC, even before AdWords was born, I advocated for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and overall SEM (Search Engine Marketing) over PPC (Pay Per Click advertisement). Recently, blogs, news, client requests, and Google Trends show an ever increasing attention toward SEO at the expense of attention to PPC. Site owners are starting to realize that PPC is not the only solution and certainly not the best.

There are many reasons which will lead businesses and individuals to shift their resources and efforts from online advertisement, PPC in particular, to SEO. Some of the reasons that come to mind are: slowing economy, advertisement saturation, lack of ROI, and perhaps realization that SEO has superior value. The facts are obvious: more businesses look for SEO than ever before. Here is a recent comparison of SEO and PPC in Google Trends (from today 9/7/08):

It is true that with paid online marketing such as AdWords or Panama, it is fairly easy to see results fast. However, once you analyze the ROI in almost any business and on almost any product now a days, the data will tell you that you did OK, and nothing more than OK. In other words, you will get results but a simple glance at all your options will reveil similar or, in some cases, better ROI with other venues like Press Releases, Public Relations, Good old fashion marketing, or even … SEO. In fact, you might discover that if you try using a newsletter to promote your products you may get better ROI. This occured more than once with our clients, where their customers enjoyed the personal attention and the on going discounts that we saw a continuous boost of 30-50% in sales the day of the newsletter compared to the entire month. The bottom line: you must try other venues not only PPC advertisement!

As for the negative part of PPC, I will cover it very briefly just because I do not enjoy discussing the negatives. Watch for click fraud! Avoid paying for syndicated advertisement - it almost never shows results! Ok, I am done.

So why SEO? I have managed websites where the owner consistently spent north of $100K on paid advertisement per month with a single PPC vendor. While it worked and the results were there - the ROI compared to other solutions were never great. In comparison, take one month pay away from PPC and put it toward SEO at least once a year and you shall see greater results over time. The upside to PPC is that it is immediate, once you turn it on you see hits. With SEO you got to give it time and nurish the process. Typical results are showing within 3-6 months and nothing is guaranteed. These are the main reasons that businesses shy away from it, but they shouldn’t. Remember, once you gain momentum in SEO it is very difficult to take it away.

Never forget that SEO is only one of many tools or aproaches that you need for any website. Marketing a website requires a mix of efforts, one of them is SEO. Efficient website marketing includes SEM (Search Engine Marketing), Press Releases (with links), Working on raising the number of links into the site, etc.

Conclusion

The fact is out: a trend of increased attention to SEO over PPC is on. The reason for this trend is not fully understood but it can be attributed to the slowing economy, lack of ROI, or better awareness of SEO value. Regardless, many SEO projects have shown that SEO can deliver better ROI than PPC over time. Do you prefer SEO over PPC?

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