GravityFreedom – Discussions on Internet Marketing, Web Design and Web Development by GravityFree in Sarasota, Florida

A recent column in the Sarasota Herald Tribune discussed the merits of PPC vs. SEO (“Paying search engine may not be worth it” by Jerry Chautin, January 21, 2008). As you can guess from the title, it did not leave the reader with a favorable impression of paid advertising on search engines. In fact, it seemed that the article suggests that SEO is the best way to maximize search engine traffic opportunities. I think that the answer is far more complicated than that and every company should seriously consider using both tactics in a search engine strategy.  

Imagine opening up the phone book and looking for a category like pizza. When you get there, you see pizza listings and ads for pizzerias. Is it valuable to have an ad along with a listing? Now, unlike the phone book, it is a search engine algorithm that determines which listing appears first in a search for “pizza.” If a company can successfully secure that first position for the term “pizza”, then everything is fine. But do all people search for just “pizza?” What if they search for “vegetarian pizza” or “pan pizza?” Can a successful search engine opmization campaign achieve rankings for all of those terms and stay there permanently?Google Giveth and Google Taketh Away.A successful realtor in town for many years has occupied a top position for the search phrase “Sarasota real estate.” Most of the time during the last few years, his website would typically have a better position than the largest realty companies in town, let alone other realtors. His site is very well optimized with a great deal of rich content, fresh news and other notable SEO practices. Despite all of his efforts, for over 5 months, his site was all but eliminated from the Google index. The realtor scrambled to gain the rankings back that he had lost. He discussed his dilemma with other specialists…he searched for redundant content that he could eliminate to satisfy the Google gods…he was in a panic. After time went by, he was able to regain his position and start the traffic rolling again.The lesson to be learned from this is that no one can guarantee position. And even if someone achieves great results today, things could change tomorrow. This does not mean that SEO is to be ignored, but one should recognize its limitations. It is very similar to public relations in that way. In public relations, you can do everything you can to get your story printed, but at the end of the day, it is up to the media to produce it. Likewise, you can do everything you can to develop your site so that it adheres to SEO best practices, but it is up to the search engine to list you.

Paid Placement

There is no advertising that offers the control and analysis that PPC advertising does. Using the pizza analogy above, if you want your ad to appear alongside organic results for every variation of pizza that you can think of (stuffed, delivery, pan, vegetarian, vegan, local, etc.), you can. Additionally, you can control your daily spend, adding and subtracting as you see fit. You can also geographically control your ads to only appear in a certain area (city, state, nation). For more on local targeting of PPC ads, see my earlier post. If you happen to be selling Sarasota real estate, you can focus a local ad on the quality of your listings (waterfront, downtown, etc.), but focus an international ad on exchange rates. If you utilize analytics of some sort, you can even see if your PPC traffic results in a lead or an online sale.At GravityFree, we have a number of floral clients who utilize PPC. In their cases, each kind of flower arrangement has its own landing page (the page where a visitor “lands” on your site, not necessarily the homepage). That means that there is a special page for funeral flowers, birthday flowers, holiday flowers, etc. Why would someone who is searching for “funeral flowers” want to go to a page that talks about Valentine’s Day?There are some things to watch out for in PPC marketing. Using analytics, you should constantly monitor the quality of your traffic. Is the return (dollars, leads, etc.) worth the investment? It is true that some traffic may not be converting, but you can adjust your traffic through modifying bids, keywords, ad text and landing pages to focus on the traffic that produces results. No matter how much traffic you receive that is not converting, if your return-on-investment is worth it, then why wouldn’t you invest in PPC marketing?What Do You Think?I feel it is important to stress that neither SEO nor PPC is best done by itself and any company should explore both. Results should be the ultimate indicator of what is most successful. Certainly, there are plenty of cases where one works better than the other, but that could change at any time. In the example of the realtor above, I am sure that he would have loved to have a PPC campaign going for the time that he was eliminated from the index. What experiences do you have that may shed more light on this discussion?