You can let the SEO Professionals and PPC Professionals fight it out, but PPC Professionals may win.
Ah yes… the age old question… SEO or PPC? Does it really even matter?
Yes, it does. It used to be that SEO was the best option for online marketing as it yielded the best/most traffic for the dollars spent and effort. You could market your website with tons of articles and cast a wide net of opportunity to drive traffic. That still holds true for some niche industries. However, with several factors which I’ll point out below, you’ll see why paid search seems like a better choice.
Just a disclaimer before we proceed: my agency still believes that both SEO and PPC are worth persuing when marketing your product or service online. We have both SEO professionals and PPC professionals, and have been doing both since they first existed. We see tremendous value in both, and usually it all comes down to what you are willing/able to invest.
Why Google Adwords PPC Marketing?
Since October of 2011, Google decided to update their privacy policy which can block a tremendous amount of keyword data. In some cases, we’ve seen 60% of our keyword data hidden because of this. When focusing on SEO or PPC, you can see why knowing exactly what keywords are best performing really does matter. The great thing about Google Adwords is that the “not provided” keyword issue is no longer an issue here. We’re able to see all the keywords that users utilized when coming to our website via PPC because we’ve paid Google. This is the number one reason why we always recommend using Adwords at any capacity. There are many more advantages to using Adwords OVER organic SEO, and I’ll explain them below. Even though our agency makes more money on SEO, we’ll always recommend going to some sort of paid search campaign.
2 BIG reasons why Google Adwords PPC rocks:
Create and manage large lists of keywords
One of my favorite advantages of using Adwords is that we can create HUGE lists of keyphrases. Depending on client budgets, we create ad groups each holding around 20 different phrases of focus. At the end of the day, our campaigns hold thousands of keyphrases that are super relevant and specific to the subject we are marketing. This enables us to drive quality traffic for a much lower price. It’s all about easily organizing keywords into Google PPC keyword groups & creating targeted and effective ads for each keyword group.
Drive more business to your site through more highly qualified traffic
The more relevant the ads/keywords/visit are to the landing page of choice, the higher the quality score will be, and thus, the lower the cost per click. With all campaigns, we write better, more relevant AdWords landing pages which allows us to get a much higher quality visitor. The better the quality of visitor, the more opportunity we have to convert that visitor into a lead. With conversion tracking installed, we can see exactly what keyphrases are converting visitors into leads and eliminate irrelevant clicks and wasted spend by implementing negative keywords. We can then reallocate the dollars that weren’t working efficiently towards keyphrases that are working great!
The Bottom Line
If you’ve never had success with Google Adwords or other PPC programs, it’s most likely because the wrong person or company was managing it. It’s not a simple task if you aren’t a technical, marketing focused, entrepreneur-minded human. The tests alone to get Google Adwords Certified are amongst the hardest tests to pass today. There are constant updates being made to Google Adwords, and new opportunities rise daily within each account.
Once you’ve got keyphrases you KNOW convert and work for your business, you can focus on SEOing your website for those proven phrases to rank high organically on Google. That’s where the SEO Professionals can take the reigns and start driving even more opportunities to your website.
Today, every dollar spent is trackable against an actual new business acquisition. Every tool in your marketing tool kit will not be as quantifiable as Google Adwords. It’s the best tool that exists today to drive the best business to our bottom line.
If you would like to learn more on how we can help you attract your ideal client types and drive more business, please call CMDS at 732-706-5555 today.