SEO and Paid Advertising are both in the top 5 methods used by local businesses when marketing online. We are often asked which of these 2 methods would suit best in their business and have recorded a conversation where we discuss which one would work best in your business.
We also discuss the idea of an overall marketing plan and how that would look for your business.
The short of it… NO!
The 2 algorithms are separate and they the organic algorithm ignores the adwords algorithm.
I have come across the question a couple of times and one person that was certain that there was a direct correlation.
In this instance it was a mis-configuration of their analytics, which was not flagging their adwords traffic correctly so they presumed it was organic.
With all of this in mind and although there is no benefit on organic ranking (directly from the using adwords), I have seen an impact on organic rankings (when used correctly) as a result of paid ads.
This has happened when trying to increase the quality score on an ad for adwords, which indirectly impacted the keyword density of the page that was ranking organically.
The moral of the story here… Make sure you use landing pages in your campaign and keep your adwords and organic separate.
Also, if you use you adwords data (CTR and Bounce Rate) in correlation with your Organic struture, you can improve your overall traffic.
Sources, Sources, Sources…
You’ll notice I’m only grabbing sources that are direct from Google as these are monitored and audited by Google.
The people that have responded have earned a higher member level (which is earned from Google based on accuracy, number of posts and knowledge)
Also, this is a youtube video from Matt Cutts (from Google) where he states there is no correlation – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dvdg17aS5iI
If you haven’t tried Google’s Pay-Per-Click (PPC) search engine marketing service yet (aka Google Adwords), I’d recommend doing it soon.
More and more online businesses are realizing that — done right — a PPC campaign can be a fabulous source of cheap, instant, highly qualified traffic.
PPC listings are the ‘Sponsored Links’ that appear in the TOP 3 positions and on the right-hand-side column of the front-page of Google.
They work like an online auction where the advertiser pays a certain amount of money (let’s say $1.00 as an example) every time someone clicks on the ad that is showing to visit your website.
This is determined by how much you are willing to bid for your ad to appear on the front-page and in which position.
The benefit of this advertising is that it enables your business to get found on the front page of Google where 98% of all browsers go to find products or services first these days.
Not only that but you also get to :
1. Choose your daily budget
2. Select what geographic areas you want your site to get found by. For example, if you are a local dentist and you only want to target people in a certain part of the city, then you can select that option for your campaign.
3. Select what page on your website to direct traffic to. many business owners build specific ‘landing-pages’ just for their PPC campaigns to maximize enquiries.
4. Work out your ROI (return on investment) real quickly
5. Know exactly how many people visit your site and what actions they take when they get there
6. Have a non-stop flood of highly targeted leads going to your website for less than a cup of coffee in some cases
7. Become a dominant player in your industry on the Internet virtually overnight.
8. and so much more…
So, this is the upside, what is the downside you might ask?
Well, after running hundreds of PPC campaigns for hundreds of local businesses I can tell you that the biggest mistake I see people make with this type of advertising is trying to do it themselves, without the proper training or experience and wasting time and money getting no results.
Click here to enquire about our Google Adwords programs
But if you were to try doing it yourself here is what I recommend:
Then, if after you’ve been running your campaign for awhile and it’s still not delivering you the results you were after, please seek the help of an Adwords trained professional.
If you would like to find out more about our PPC programs and how we can start delivering you highly targeted traffic to your website within a few days from now then Click Here to enquire about our Google Adwords programs
