When you ask for SEO, do you really want PPC?

I regularly hear from people who want SEO done for their website so they can get loads of free clicks coming form google search. The reality is for many businesses, they should look to paid PPC/SEM as the better option, though probably a bit of both. Why you ask? First, let me clarify with what I mean by some of these terms, or if your in a hurry skip to the end for my rationale;

What are you getting with SEO?

First SEO comes in 3 main forms:

Technical – this is making sure the website is build with SEO friendly methods, technology and formats. Things like images are sized and named correctly, URL are machine readable and aligned to the search terms and content and your website is running at good speeds and many more.
On-Page/Content: This is SEO done via optimising existing content, as well as creating content that will draw in readers and provide them with a good experience, be it articles, videos, infographics etc as well as cross linking this information across your site in SEO friendly ways.
Link Building /Off-page – this is when we encourage links into the web site from different domains, ideally with good authority, reputation and content relevancy. This is an area you want to be most careful with and ensure you use reputable people if you take this option. Id strongly recommend not to do this with anyone that cold calls you as they may end up doing more harm than good for your rankings.

Other SEO information:

In all my time doing SEO, there is one fundamental that matters at the end of the day, make a user friendly site with quality content. In the long term, hacks and tricks don’t matter and that effort and investment disappears but a quality experience will continue to win your business ranking.
With SEO be sure you know what you are going to do and use reputable people. Many ‘quick wins’ will come at negative costs sometimes down the track as the algorithms catch-up. At its worst this is referred to as ‘black hat SEO’ and can get domains delisted, though usually Google drops your ranking right back.
In terms of workload for a small; business brochure site; 1) Technical SEO is probably 6-10hrs and probably worth revisiting annually, 2) Link-building would typically want 30hrs over a couple months and 3) Content is as much or little as you want to invest in it.

What are you getting with SEM/PPC?

An Overview:

These are paid ads, like the ones you see when you search Google or browse Facebook
Search engine marketing methods and options vary per platform – the 2 main platforms are Facebook and Google AdWords. I usually recommend starting with Adwords which is the largest platform and tends to be the best to capture consumers looking for a service.
The Adwords platform must offer 40+ targeting points, but key ones business use are;
- Keywords: We decide what words people type into Google search we should show for, and under what conditions. E.g do we want a word to exactly match, or just be in a similar category. We also can have negative keywords to stop ads showing if someone uses a particular word.
- Price: Adwords works like an auction system with multipliers. You only pay if someone clicks your ad. So we ‘bid’ on search words. Bid value is adjusted on 1) quality and 2) relevancy scores so when we get these right a lower bid can display over someone that bid more. Typically we pay $1-$4 per click with vet ads. The highest bid shows at the top of the search ads with the rest in descending value order.
- Location: We target where people are, or areas they are interesting in. So for example we could target people physically within Crows Nest suburb. Or people interested in a service inside Crows Nest.
- Time: We choose when ads would run.

How we recommend you approach PPC

I believe in what I call a ‘shotgun approach’ to Adwords. Where we start with a broad range of options and then optimise down. I find this gets to good results fast.
Having worked across many clients, often we have the advantage of knowing what works in other accounts so usually lets us start in a good place. With a typical account we might start with ~500 keywords running and ~50 ads. Over time we will look at what drives customers by looking at their behaviour when they reach the website. From this we will adjust the above targeting and how much we bid. Tracking and understanding goals and values is the most important to get value rather than focusing on how many visitors and costs. For example we’d prefer to pay $10 per ad click if we knew every one of those ‘clicks’ became a new customer than $1 per click if those cheaper ad clicks just reach your website and then leave without phoning the business.
PPC is very effective at driving traffic, but as you pay for people to see or click on your ads, making sure you target the right people at the right time in their purchase cycle is key.

The summary:

So why do I tell many small business to focus on paid ads rather than these free google clicks.

I think you should do both, and not because this is how I make my living! But when companies come to me with their SEO budget, often I feel we can get 80% of the SEO results with 20% of the spend, and then spend the rest of the budget on PPC for a greater overall result. SEO has rapidly diminishing returns to time spent, so you want to be sure your not chasing result inefficiently. This is an advantage of using a generalised agency like YayClicks, we will recommend the alternative to you rather than push to use a specialised service beyond its efficient means.
Google likes big companies – for a small business, you can rank, but unless you are very local or niche, the bigger and established players will have a huge advantage. And not to say you shouldn’t challenge them but this takes time and effort. Typically I find business want faster result than SEO can give so this is where paying for position counts.
Google clicks aren’t free, well they are, but SEO takes time and therefore costs money. Often its a simpler process for a business to know they can pay a cost like $12 acquiring a new customer with paid ads and what that will return to them, than spend thousands on a long term maybe. You can still measure SEO results and take this back to return on investment but SEO is a longer term commitment.
SEO is an ever changing landscape, this combined with a world where budgets are limited, for all but the larger companies I feel its best to allocate SEO spend to the time effective known winners than chase the latest strategy for ranking. With the latter it not uncommon these efforts lose value down the track as too many people try to manipulate search engines, so unless your budget is large, SEO is best done on the key points, and points that add long term value.
PPC is cost effective. Its rare that we cant deliver campaigns with solid return on investment margins. As commonly found, you get what you pay for, and paid ads when done right are exactly that.