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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Help Topics
Definition
"PPC" means Pay Per Click, where business pay search engines for link placement on search results. This is the major source of search engine revenue, and a boon to all business seeking to immediately improve their search engine rankings. Search engines sell listings/advertisements for a fee that ranges from .5 cents to 5 dollars and up depending on the "Competitiveness" of the term. Overture, and Google Adwords are the two best-known PPC services. There are also smaller services such as findwhat that also provide PPC.
"SEO" refers to Search Engine Optimization. This generally refers to "natural" or "organic" search results. They are the non-sponsored results that a search engine returns back to the searcher as "relevant."
PPC and SEO combined are often combined referred to as "Search Engine Marketing"
History
PPC came out about 6 years ago with the original "goto.com" which is now known as Overture.
In the beginning all searches on search engines would send generate "natural results" to the surfer. The need for revenue and the popularity of search engines quickly led to serch engines to include "Banner Ads" with search results. Search engines quickly leared that advertisers would pay more if their banner ads were included with search resulsts that were relevant to the product that they were advertising, so a search for apples would result in banner ad for apples if there was one, or a generic banner ad if not, followed by the natural search results.
Along came goto.com with a new concept - having businesses "Bid" for their position in the search engine results.
The highest bidder received the top spot and therefore depending on relevancy received the most clicks.
The concept was an immediate success, and other search engine companies soon followed with their own pay per click system.
Is PPC right for my website?
While it is difficult to set generic standards for websites, a balanced approach between natural SEO and PPC listings is generally the best approach to Search Engine Marketing.
Depending on the competition in your market and your search phrase your cost per click can easily pass $5 or more per click. This is often too expensive for smaller web sites who have limited advertising budgets. Additionally, search engine users typically ignore ppc listings and click on natural listings only.
PPC Positives
- Fast results. Generally speaking PPC listings can be analyzed, activated and turned on in a matter of hours or days.
- You get what you pay for. The highest bidder generally speaking achieves the greatest number of clicks.
- PPC Results Analysis can be analyzed on a concrete basis. For example, say purchasing 1,000 clicks at $.10 per click results in 10 sales at $50 each - so $100 dollars of paid clicks results $500 in sales. ROI (return on investment) and Cost Per Sale is easy to calculate.
Negatives
- PPC Cost. Costs can add up for quickly Pay Per Click Campaigns, especially for popular search terms. Small PPC buyers may be competing with large corporations with large PPC budgets.
- PPC Tracking and reporting.
Keeping track of the competition and management of PPC campaigns can be a time-consuming task. Our staff of SEO consultants can provide PPC Management services to maintain and track PPC campaigns with automated reporting. Additionally X7 Media has partner agreements with companies that will provide PPC XML feeds to various search engines and maintain these feeds for our clients.
Natural SEO
Natural SEO is a process that takes at least 2-4 months to achieve higher rankings, and top rankings on highly competitive terms require constant vigilence and site optimization. With a moderate PPC budget and help from our consultants, most customers achieve fast results and more traffic quickly as the turn around time on ppc listings is generally less then 5 business days. Optimizing websites for organic "free listings" generally requires restructuring the content of the website, but provides much better ROI over the long haul, as there is no cost per click.
SEO Positives
- Strategic Search Engine Optimization Results are typically long-lasting. Clients pay an up-front fee, but there is no cost per click.
- Sponsored Listings Ignored Many surfers ignore of sponsored (PPC) results, and only click on natural listings.
- Long-term SEO strategy. PPC campaigns provide immediate traffic, but are expensive in the long term. Focusing on the SEO aspect online marketing is always the best long-term strategy.
SEO Negatives
- SEO is a Long-term process. Changes are not immediate and may take weeks or months to improve search engine rankings.
- Page Changes Required The client must be willing willing to change the structure and content of the web site and pages. This means directly editing the structure and content of each page.
- Certain web technology causes problems Sites that are heavy on graphics, heavy flash, use javascript or other client side scripting languages exclusively, will have a difficult time of achieving good SEO.
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