Many small businesses starting their own websites innocently start out in what’s to them a new advertising medium, online advertising. Google pay-per-click, Facebook ads and other services are generally easy to setup and provide immediate results.
That’s why so many people like PPC and online advertising – there’s usually a pretty easy way to see how many clicks you’re getting, which generally start occurring right after you get everything setup. Some even go as far to phase out all other forms of advertising, thinking PPC has got to be the best and easiest way to market a business.
So why is it not a good idea to rely solely on pay-per-click advertising to bring traffic?
First a little history – the subject of SEO vs. PPC has been a debate in the online marketing community for years.
Certainly PPC deserves its place in the marketing mix…according to data from a SES Conference, PPC traffic converts 2.03% of visitors versus 1.26% for organic results. PPC visitors spend about 10% more on sites than organic visitors. And they usually stay on a site approximately 29% longer than organic visitors.
But speaking long-term, there are several reasons why PPC shouldn’t be your primary choice.
First of all, when you use PPC or any other form of “advertising,” the money you spend doesn’t typically increase the value of your online assets. You’re basically paying for every visitor to your site. If you want more, you’ve got to pay more $$$.
SEO on the other hand helps build traffic sources naturally. Money and time you spend goes to improving your website by adding content, making the site’s structure is easy for the search engines to crawl and growing inbound links by letting other people know about your site. Not only will organic listings end up driving a much bigger segment of visitors, your site will have more credibility since most people know anyone can pay for PPC advertising.
And of course this discussion wouldn’t be complete without mentioning the ever-evolving social media landscape online. Building a social community around your brand is another way you can grow traffic…and it increases brand equity as well.
Social media and SEO works to create an asset you own with the traffic coming without a cost per click.
But even still, many companies spend more money on PPC than SEO and social media. Perhaps it’s because PPC is just so easy. Of course, that’s to Google’s credit for making a product that’s user-friendly and gets results.
However, over the long-term, SEO and social media can help you build assets that will bring in site visitors and conversions at a much lower cost. Check back again soon to see how you can migrate from PPC to SEO without losing your traffic.
Are you “addicted” to PPC? Do you carry all of your marketing eggs in that one basket?