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.
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Another great article Mike! Thanks for sharing.
I have a quick question though. How do you suppose something like this happens with such a large company? I would think this would have been caught before now.
Thanks again for writing this blog. I always look forward to your posts because I always learn something new.
Hi George! Thanks for th reading and the very kind words!
I think somehting like this happens because all to often Internet Marketing Pros get into a routine. It was probably routine to add the name of the company into the Adwords campaigne because well, for a new website that is pretty common. The mistake IMHO was not realizing when they could take it out and just live with the organic search results. I’m guessing about 5-6 years ago easily…if not longer!
Thanks again for reading and the comment!
I have never heard of SPYFU before reading this post. I checked them and they seem legit. Can you tell me if there is any reason why I should not just use them for 100% of my research? Do you use them exclusively? If not what else do you use?
Thanks for writing this article. I learned something new.
Hi Marie – Thanks for reading and taking the time to comment.
I use a varitey of Keyword research tools. I use Google Adwords and SPYFU primarily though. I would never use either of these (or any other service) exclusively though. It’s always better to way your sources and use an average in my opinion. No one is 100% accurate when it come to predicting traffic IMHO.
Seems like PPC should have the option to be setup with an algorithm that will not show the PPC if the organic result is even on the page.
Now that’s a good idea. I don’t know if Google will ever implement that though. I’m guessing they are making a pretty penny off of mistakes like this one from the larger corporate customers that spend 6 figures (or more) on paid search advertising.
Great way to think about it though Ken!
Good day there administrator, I actually wished to place a quick comment to say that in fact I liked your article very much. Thanks!
Nice color choice on the blog. It is really easy on my eyes and I have bad eyes too so that’s a really big compliment lol
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