Reduce your PPC costs by doing more SEO
Did you know that correctly implemented SEO activities could potentially save businesses fortunes in PPC costs?
Search engines are now firmly established as a rich source of potential customers for online businesses, and spending on search marketing has rocketed as a result.
A report on search engine marketing published this year claims that 60% of marketers are planning to increase both their SEO and PPC budgets over the next year. Small wonder when 50% of respondents claimed a 300% ROI on paid search while two thirds of respondents claimed a similar 300% ROI on organic search.
Now it may not surprise you to learn that the great majority of Internet users prefer organic search results over sponsored listings. But what might surprise you is that the total spend on paid search (PPC) in the UK greatly exceeds expenditure on organic search marketing (SEO).
According to recent studies, Web users tend to choose the natural search results in preference to the sponsored ads. One prominent survey found that over 72% of Google users only click on the organic results, completely ignoring the PPC ads. The survey also found that the percentage grows even higher for more experienced Google users. And yet at the same time, recent reports estimate that paid search accounts for over 80% of the search marketing spend in the UK. This discrepancy begs the question : are UK businesses missing a trick or more importantly missing out on the largest section of their potential online audience?
This may be explained in part by the high costs of pay-per-click advertising. PPC costs have soared over the last few years across almost every sector. This trend is set to continue as the PPC marketplace becomes increasingly crowded. But the imbalance can also be explained by the apparent lack of understanding and trust in SEO practices. SEO is a relatively new industry and has no real similarities with the offline world. Businesses are much more comfortable with the PPC model where results are more immediate and reporting of ROI is more transparent.
The appeal of pay-per-click is the speed at which campaigns can be set up and results can be seen in terms of site visits, and also the control you have over the running costs. PPC is certainly effective for those selling high price products and services, or companies operating with high profit margins. But since organic results receive far more clicks than PPC ads, SEO is more effective at driving visitors by targeting high volume generic phrases. In terms of cost per visitor, SEO is much cheaper than PPC. It’s not uncommon to see savings of 50% or more per click, compared with paid search.
But this is not an argument in favour of SEO and against PPC. I'm a strong believer that any online marketing strategy should include both SEO and PPC. They can work very well in tandem, complimenting each other with each targeting different visitors. However, the balance of expenditure needs to be looked at very carefully. Certainly at the more competitive end of the industry (targeting generic phrases or 2 word commercial phrases), the visitor acquisition costs are much lower with SEO. PPC is more effective at targeting a wide range of less competitive phrases (often called the “long tail”). These phrases are relatively cheap (per click) but may yield higher conversions.
More businesses should consider re-allocating some of their PPC budgets to SEO activities in those areas where there are significant savings in costs (per visitor). Ideally, organic SEO can help reduce the inflated costs of PPC, and even improve the efficiency of PPC campaigns. Next time you’re looking for an online marketing supplier, you might want to ask them how they can help you save money and achieve better results over the longer term by incorporating SEO into your overall marketing plan.
