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SEO vs PPC which has a better ROI

Posts Tagged ‘seo’

SEO vs PPC: Which Has Better Return on Your Investment?

It seems like we’re always splitting ourselves into teams, and in inbound marketing, it’s not that different. For search engine marketing, it’s team SEO (search engine optimization) taking on team PPC (pay-per-click). Both methods have pluses and minuses, but it doesn’t answer the perpetual question: Is SEO better than PPC or is PPC better than SEO?

Let’s first take a step back and review what exactly each one is. Search engine optimization focuses on using organic search of targeted keywords within your website content to rank higher than other websites in search results. Pay-per-click or PPC is paid advertising for specific keywords on those same search result pages.

Each one has its own list of pros and cons. SEO is consistently viewed as more trustworthy by search users, but can take three to six months for your web pages to begin returning in SERPs (search engine results pages). PPC is only visible on one search engine and needs constant reinvestment. If you were to run a PPC campaign on Google AdWords and also want to have the same campaign run on Bing, you would have to create a new set of ads.

One point of conflicting information in this ongoing debate is the belief PPC such as AdWords will help your website with ranking and overall credibility. Since PPC will take a visitor to a landing page, rankings won’t be affected one way or the other. We take a closer look at this reason later in our blog. Ranking is decided by the search engine algorithms, taking into account content curation, keywords, and blogging on your website.

Isn’t PPC Better Than SEO?

From the standpoint of the search engine companies like Google and Bing, PPC is where they make money. SEO has very little revenue for these companies and constantly has ranking algorithms being tweaked and changed.

A good PPC campaign will need a $50 to $100 daily spend on clicks with a realization and understanding that not every click will turn into a lead, let alone a customer. It can give an initial boost in traffic to a new website or web page that would otherwise take up to three months to return in organic search results. However, paid traffic such as this stops as soon as a campaign is over and the budget is removed.

On the other hand, SEO statistically brings better traffic and more trusting leads. Many people have become immune to seeing paid results on search results regardless of placement on the page. It is also up to 45 percent times more cost effective than PPC, even though it takes longer to begin returning financial results. Plus, organic links earn nearly 90 percent of the clicks on page one SERPs on Google, while the rest of the clicks go to PPC.

Don’t I Get Customers More Quickly with AdWords Than Organic?

Paid search advertising like, AdWords, provides quicker results, but it can just as quickly use up a marketing budget. The landing page behind the AdWord is where you need to convince the searcher to make a purchase, schedule an appointment, or otherwise convert to a customer. Any landing page you have needs to be specific to the AdWord it’s behind as this will drive more conversions. Think of it as nobody wants to click on an ad and be taken to a page for something unrelated to what they were searching for.

Organic searches are considered the most valuable traffic source because once you move up the rankings, you continue earning consistent traffic from those rankings for some time. A 2013 study by online ad network Chitika (now out of business), 92 percent of all search traffic is found on page one of Google search results. Google is very particular about how it ranks SERPs, meaning if you rank on page one, you have quality content on your website.

So Which One Wins?

Our final opinion on the subject is delivered in just two words. Do both!

That is, if you have the budget and are willing to spend money to promote a landing page offer or a service of your business, and you are willing to accept that you could spend from $10 a click to over $200 to get each new lead or customer. Eventually, you’ll get the right combination and spend less and this could be a good boost to your bottom line.

If you can accept those terms, do PPC in conjunction with SEO. If it’s a choice between one or the other and you don’t have “deep pockets”, SEO is absolutely proven to drive up your sites organic traffic in the long run and provide more ROI over time.

Make sure you have attainable, specific goals when you get into your project. Whether it’s an organic method or a PPC campaign, having goals and benchmarks are crucial to measuring success and continuing to move forward with your marketing and budgeting decisions.

Let Us Help You Manage Your SEO, AdWords and Facebook Ad Campaigns. Get a FREE 30 Minute Consultation!

We would like to offer you a FREE 30 minute consultation to review your marketing and help launch your business to new heights. Just fill out the form below and our marketing specialist will contact you within the hour!

Is My Brand or Website Affecting My Bottom Line?

Maybe it was a snippet of a conversation you overheard an employee and a customer having.

“I was using your website the other day and it looks, well, bad.” or “I went to your website and it wasn’t working right.”

Without knowing the full context of the conversation, those words alone can cause a business owner to pause. You’ve had your website for several years and it’s served the business quite well, thank you very much. But times change and so do customers expectations, including expectations of a business’s website. All of this leads into a question we’ve heard from clients and others we’ve met with: is my brand or website hurting my bottom line?

The answer is somewhere in the middle, quite possibly. Having your brand consistent across all platforms and mediums is crucial, but so is having an up-to-date and secure website that is also user-friendly. So many moving parts, right?

Let’s look at your brand first. Having a unified brand image and message for all of the strategy elements you use in your marketing will keep building off one another. Using consistent logos, branding, and messaging across all marketing, social media, websites, and anything your business is involved in or produces ties everything together. By doing this, you’re letting customers and non-customers alike know anytime they see that particular logo or tagline, it’s your business.

On the other hand, your website truly can make or break a business as it brings many components together in one central location. Having a clear design acts as a clear message to your customers and anyone visiting your website. Crisp, sharp, user-friendly can signal your business is engaged, operational, and holds customer service to a very high standard. Conversely, a muddied brand or website can send multiple messages to people, such as lackadaisical, disinterested, uncaring.

 

How Can I Measure This and Make It Better?

If you find your website or brand aren’t providing as much of a return-on-investment to your bottom line as they should, don’t panic. There are several things to look at before you tear everything apart and start over. Chances are only one or two things will need an adjustment.

Let’s start with your conversions. This word is used and tossed around a lot in marketing and business, but the meaning can become a bit muddied over time. A conversion is how many of the people who visited your website actually did something that will impact your business, such as downloading a checklist or ebook, after providing some basic information like email address or telephone number. Everything you do with digital marketing is meant to have as many conversions as possible. Conversions feed directly into Google Analytics, which we will touch on in a moment. The more in touch you are with your analytics, the more quickly you can spot conversion hangups or roadblocks and make changes.

If you use Google Analytics to track your website, and anything happens on your website, even the briefest of visits, Google Analytics will let you know. What pages people are visiting – or not – on your website, where the visitor is located based on internet provider address, and what type of device they’re accessing your website from are a small sampling of the information Google can provide. Through this, you’ll be able to see if a call-to-action is working and if not, make needed changes for it to be more engaging and inviting to visitors.

One of the deepest insights you can have from your website is through attribution models. These statistics determine how much credit for conversions are assigned to touchpoints (specific clicks) in conversion paths. The purpose is to quantify each impression on a visitor’s decision to convert or not. With these numbers in hand, you can optimize advertising budgets for specific conversions. Attribution models are split into three areas: single source, fractional, and algorithmic/probabilistic. Single source assigns all credit to one event, but are regarded as least accurate for this reason. Fractional attribution does what its name implies, giving equal weights to all touchpoints, while the third model, algorithmic/probabilistic, is the most complex. Using science or proprietary algorithms, credit is assigned across all touchpoints before the conversion.

So what does all of this mean for you? Well, we recommend starting with looking over your Google Analytics for any obvious sticking points. From there, you can either adjust content, landing pages, calls-to-action, or any other element of your website that isn’t engaging your visitors to the point of conversion.

Are There Any Calls-To-Action and Are They Being Clicked?

Your calls-to-action should be the first thing you’ve looked at once you’ve verified your content is quality and relevant to your customers. Whether it’s scheduling an appointment, navigating through the shopping cart or otherwise on your website, it should be clear and concise for users. A Google Analytics tracking code should be placed on every call-to-action your website has. Why? Otherwise, you’ll never know if the call-to-action is remotely working.

Are Your Calls-To-Action and Pages Showing up in Google Rankings?

Everybody and everything are about that Google rank and your calls-to-action should be feeding that. The landing page behind any call-to-action needs to follow three basic guidelines to be considered high quality by Google.

First, any content, meaning text or keywords used, must be directly relevant to the call-to-action. Cross-pollinating calls-to-action is definitely not recommended if you’re aiming for a quality rank. This also includes testing out a change in your brand; the call-to-action should remain consistent with all branding messages your business has. Second, the information on the landing page needs to be useful for whatever your call-to-action was bringing people in for. See the reason above as to why this is necessary. And lastly, the call-to-action should offer useful features and or content unique to your website.

 

Elevare Can Give You a Boost

Nobody likes to see their bottom line being affected by anything. But when it comes to having mixed messaging with a brand or a website that has gone from stellar to stagnant, Elevare can get your business back on the right track.

We’ve worked with companies who wanted align their current branding across platforms and companies who wanted to create a whole new brand for a new transition.

As for websites, we work really hard to build websites that present your company, knowledge and services in the best way possible so you can be successful in your marketing efforts. It doesn’t matter if it’s a hiccup or the type of bottom line issues that have your hand hovering over the panic button, Elevare can help steer your marketing in the right direction!

 

Let Us Help You Increase Your Bottom Line Effectively. Get a FREE 30 Minute Consultation!

We would like to offer you a FREE 30 minute consultation to review your website and brand and help launch your business to new heights. Just fill out the form below and our marketing specialist will contact you within the hour!