Does a business really need both organic, natural search (that is, the regular search engine results) as well as paid search (that is, pay per click, PPC ads)? The answer for most businesses is: Yes.
Let's compare these two forms of advertising -- for, indeed, we must consider the both forms of advertising.
| | Organic Search | Paid Search |
Position on the page | More visible | Less visible on right side, except ads that appear above natural search results |
Speed of results | Several months | Several days |
Trust level | Moderate | A bit less trust -- if searchers can actually tell the difference between a paid ad and natural search results |
Difficulty of getting top positions | Can be difficult | Usually fairly easy -- if you're willing to bid high enough |
Traffic volume | Depends on position for various keywords | Can be high for all important keywords |
Cost | Very low | Moderate to high |
Many novice marketers avoid using PPC ads because they're afraid it will cost too much. But in fact, PPC ads may be the only way you'll get any decent traffic to your site at all, unless you (a) have a rather non-competitive business or (b) have optimized your website to rank high in natural search for the keywords important to you. The big advantage of PPC advertising is that you can get up-to-speed within a few days -- the time it takes the editors at Google AdWords or Yahoo! Search Marketing to approve your ads and keywords. Paid search may help you to generate a sufficient volume of traffic and sales to provide enough revenue to support your business.
Should you rely on paid search entirely? No! Outsourcing search engine optimization (SEO) begins at about $1,500 for the first few months and goes up to $10,000 per month or more, depending on the size of your site and competition for your keywords. But when you compare $1,500 for SEO to the $1,500 or $3,000 or more you may spend each month on paid search, SEO emerges a huge bargain. Typically, natural search generates low to moderate traffic at a very low cost. Paid search generates moderate to high traffic for moderate to high cost. Together, natural search helps bring down your average cost per sale to a point that you can still make money.
Are there situations in which you shouldn't use paid search at all? Yes.
- If your products are priced too low -- or you are trying to drive traffic through your affiliate site -- you may not break even with PPC.
- If your landing pages aren't optimized to get a high enough conversion rate, PPC will appear much too expensive.
- If you are at or near the top of the natural search results for most of the important keywords, PPC traffic may not bring that many additional sales.
However, the only way you'll know whether or not paid search will help build your business is to give it a fair test for two or three months. It may take several weeks to get your ads and keywords working optimally. If you haven't used split-testing software to optimize your landing pages, your results won't give you a true picture. (See my books How to Optimize Your Landing Pages Scientifically and How to Develop a Landing Page that Closes the Sale). But if you've followed best practices in setting up and running a paid search campaign and you're still not getting the results you need to be profitable after two to three months, then and only then is it time to pull the plug.
Dr. Ralph F. Wilson, Wilson Internet, Rocklin, CA
