In 2013, more than half the staff in the average office will have heard of PPC, or pay-per-click, even if they don’t quite know what it is – but not long ago, only those who worked in digital marketing knew anything about it. Following the exponential growth of the digital marketing industry over the last decade, pay-per-click advertising is no longer a niche marketing medium. As we have moved towards a digital economy, few stragglers remain. Nearly all large, medium-sized and indeed many small companies, either having led the way or dragged kicking and screaming, have moved with the times.
Today you’ll rarely find an organization of medium or above size with a stake in the digital economy without the core components of a digital marketing function – typically a social media manager, a web analyst, an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) manager and a PPC, or paid search manager. If the company also does email marketing, you can add another head to that. The functions are occasionally combined – in really small companies, it may all fall to one person – but as anybody who has managed PPC campaigns on a large scale knows, it’s a full-time job.
Google AdWords is still by far the largest pay-per-click network, although Yahoo and Microsoft combined forces in 2010 to launch their own PPC platform, AdCenter, via Microsoft’s Bing search engine.
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- Bad SEO’s are everywhere…
I know that we have posted a few recent images that cover the difference between “Paid results” and “Organic results” so I apologize right now for another. However, this topic is just too important not cover, even if it means I have to post another “Paid vs Organic” search result image yet again. Besides, this is an entirely different take on the subject that covers SEO Advertisers. But wait, aren’t they the guys that are supposed to know the difference between the two (paid vs organic)? Yep….you bethcha! We as Search Engine Optimization Professionals absolutely should know the difference. So why then, is there the need to cover this topic yet again? The reason for this blog post is to educate the general public about the difference. I received a call this week from a potential client who found us on the first page of Google (just like they are supposed to). After the initial introductions and pleasantries, we started getting down to the brass tacks of the conversation and I was asked, “if you are such a good SEO agency, why is XYZ firm at the top of the page and not you?”. The potential client was referring to a firm that was listed in the paid search results (the very top three on the page). Here’s another example of Paid vs Organic search results for those that do not know the difference:
Organic vs Paid Search
I used this particular example because it happens to be the exact search that the potential client used when searching for an SEO Agency to help him with his SEO program. Affordable SEO Services Company is a term that click-finders.com happens to rank #1 for out of 150,000,000 possible results. Pretty impressive huh? Anyway, after a few minutes of conversation, I explained to the caller that those top three results in the slightly shaded box are actually “paid ads” and that he should consider that strongly before making a final decision.
“As much as I hate to admit it, there are hundreds if not thousands of so called ‘SEO Agencies’ out there that take advantage of unsuspecting and uneducated business owners.”
So why then use Google Adwords to promote an “SEO Company”? Because there are just too many people out there that don’t know the difference between SEO and Paid Search. They type in a search term and click the top result and don’t think another thing about it unless they did not find what they are looking for, in which case they simply perform another search. An unscrupulous company might be one who then sets up a Google Adwords account and posts an ad for SEO Services and then just takes the money and does nothing for their customers. Or they charge a large amount of money and open an Adwords account for their new client and actually show them the results they got them.
Either way I think you really have to ask yourself if you want to hire a company to help you get to the top of the “organic search results” that has to have an Adword account and pay Google in order for you to find them. I would tread cautiously for sure and treat suspect any company that uses Paid Search to advertise for Organic SEO Services.
Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this article please share it with any of the multiple social media share widgets on this blog (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Social Bookmarking). Also, please feel free to comment below. I openly welcome any and all feedback, especially from other internet professionals!
Click-finders.com is a full service internet marketing company that offers a full range of services including Affordable SEO Services, PPC Adword Campaigns, Social Media Marketing, Web Development and more! Contact us today for a FREE no obligation SEO Analysis of your website and find out today, what it’s going to take to rank high in the search engines!
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Not finding a mistake like this can really hurt...
I have wanted to write this article for quite some time. It just seems there’s not enough time in the day to get to all the little “want to do’s” lists that I have. However, I finally have a minute to sit down and bang this one out, so here it goes. It’s an important topic and one that is all too often overlooked by Internet Marketing professionals (both in-house marketers and agencies). It’s a serious problem that most often results in finger pointing once found. The in-house manager says the agency should have caught it and the agency will most likely state that the company reviewed and approved all keywords before launching a campaign. In the end, no matter how it happens, it’s still a BIG, expensive problem in some cases and one of my biggest pet peeves in the search engine marketing world. The truth is, they both (in-house management and professional SEO Services agency), have an obligation to prevent things like this from happening, even more so if it’s done entirely in-house! The issue is having Paid results come back for the same term that already ranks #1 organically, when results come back like this:
Note the results. The search term was “Zappos”. Now don’t get me wrong, I have a whole lot of respect for Tony Hsieh and his team over there at Zappos. They have truly built a wonderful thing with an innovative, unique and truly effective customer service business model. But to be honest, with all the brain power over there how was this missed? Look at the results again. The search term “Zappos” returned the “Top Organic” result and then the “Paid Search Box” also shows Zappos. Call me silly, but I’ll bet you anything this oversight is costing Zappos a pretty penny every month on their Google Adwords account. In fact, let’s look at a quick analysis from SPYFU.com on the term search term “Zappos”. SPYFU is a well-known and search industry recognized resource for internet marketers for SEO and Paid Search marketing data. Note the estimated daily clicks and cost for this term:
Now if we are to believe these numbers, and trust me when I say they can be deadly accurate, then the total monthly cost for this little over sight could be costing Zappos as much as $99,300.00 each month! Maybe Zappos can afford that considering annual revenues at just over a billion dollars at this point and further, some might say that having the top two spots on Google (i.e. more page one real estate) is worth the cost. Some people would also argue that certain users will ONLY click on paid search results for various reasons (trust, ignorance of the search results page, etc.). All of these might be viable arguments for a smaller company, but how many people that actually search for the term “Zappos” are not going to click on the top organic result just because a paid result is not shown? I’m guessing very little, if any, loss in traffic if this one term was dropped from the PPC campaign, yet the monies saved by this simple move could then be spent on other more effective terms that don’t show up as the first organic result and yield even more buying visitors to the site. I hope at some point, internet marketers wake up and realize that top paid and organic search results are not needed at the same time for MOST instances.
Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this article please share it with any of the multiple social media share widgets on this blog (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Social Bookmarking). Also, please feel free to comment below. I openly welcome any and all feedback, especially from other internet professionals!
Click-finders.com is a full service internet marketing company that offers a full range of services including Affordable SEO Services, PPC Adword Campaigns, Social Media Marketing, Web Development and more! Contact us today for a FREE no obligation SEO Analysis of your website and find out today, what it’s going to take to rank high in the search engines!
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