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Is Organic Search Engine Optimization Better Than PPC Advertising?

Is Organic Search Engine Optimization
Better Than PPC Advertising?
By Michael T. Hibdon, CEO, Symbolic Interactive, Inc.

Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising is an advertisement model used by certain Search Engines. The Website owner pays only for advertisements that are actually clicked on, therefore paying only for visitors, not advertisement impressions.

While the advantages may seem obvious, we have found some strong objections voiced by businesses that have stopped using PPC advertising because of the reasons cited below.

Even PPC Search Engines deliver more than top 50 search results. That means unless you're a high bidder, your Website still may not be seen by many. PPC advertising campaigns force you to come up with more money for your Keywords because your competition is bidding on those words. On the other hand, to optimize a Web Page using organic methods of tag placement, rich content text and Keyword research will produce better results over a long period of time against all your competition.
Your fellow bidders determine the bids, forcing you either to pay even more for each visitor or completely bail out of the top 3 bids. If you do the latter, then your traffic is significantly diminished; now what's your plan?
Paid Listings capture only a small percentage of total Search Engine traffic. Wouldn't it make more sense to target the majority through a good method of organic optimization? Organic search optimization will build a broad, strong listings foundation for your Website that will show high returns in the Search Engine results over time.
Many studies have shown that sales conversion rates are lower in the PPC models, averaging about a 1% sales conversion rate for the traffic received from these bid listings. The effect this has on ROI when running a campaign is devastating to a company's advertising budget.
It's a very time consuming process to constantly monitor your bids, positions, and traffic. With Yahoo!'s acquisition of Overture, a likely scenario is that the Big Four Search Engines will each have their own PPC models. If this happens, you'll have four campaigns to manage! There are many companies that provide services to assist with PPC, but you must then factor in their commissions and fees and that lowers your ROI even more.

Other objections we have seen include:

"Our company is very small and we are paying a lot for the Google AdSense and Overture Keyword PPC for our Website. There must be a better way to get traffic." This problem won't go away. It happens because the company did not build a Website that can hold its own in the Search Engine listings. As soon as they stop paying for traffic, it dribbles to a complete stop. Getting a Website into the Search Engine directories and within the first 3 pages takes organic optimization. There is no way around creating a Website with optimal Search Engine/user-friendly architecture.

When any particular Search Engine Marketing (SEM) strategy is pushed, you have to consider the source that's pushing it. All too often we hear from companies that are told by a particular SEM firm that they should pursue certain specific tactics to increase their traffic. It's common that these tactics just so happen to meet the firm's particular SEM business model, be it optimization of pages hosted by the Client, trusted feed submission, pursuit of Paid Listings and so on.

The fact is, PPC advertising is expensive. It is so expensive that anyone who is preparing to use this strategy needs to already know what their current conversion rate is (how many visitors are currently making purchases on the Website), what an acceptable return on investment (ROI) would be and what is the break-even point on bidding for words, as well as have a healthy budget to employ someone to keep track of their Keyword purchase campaign so they don't go broke trying to make money with their Website.

Many extra dollars go into traffic analysis and click-through patterns to see what visitors are currently doing. Exhaustive A-B marketing scenarios need to be run to find the best headline, offer, text, or combination of those sales pitches.

Sometimes we ask our Clients, "How often did you click on the Paid or Sponsored Listings the last time you used a Search Engine?"

We invite them to put themselves in the buyer's shoes; clicking on the Sponsored Listings occurs probably 10-20% of the time. More often than not, a targeted buyer will go straight to the "true" Search Engine matches, where they can find the most relevant Websites out of thousands or millions of page matches.

Take an in-office poll: ask co-workers to perform a search for an unrelated topic/product/service and watch their click-through trends. The majority of the time, they will skip right over the paid results.

On the other hand, YOU will notice the Paid/Sponsored Listings because you know about them and you spent a lot of company resources to put your Website there. The buyers who have no interest or stake in a PPC campaign simply overlook these Paid Listings and are conditioned, much like Pavlov's dogs, to go straight to the main results.

Everyone wants to have lots of traffic come to their Website. But there is traffic that is just passing by and there is traffic that is looking for what your Website is offering. The second kind of visitor is called a "qualified" visitor and is the kind that comes by clicking on the non-paid link in a Search Engine's query. Qualified traffic can come from other sources besides Search Engines. A good Email campaign to a list of opt-in subscribers will be much more valuable than a PPC advertising campaign that sends non-targeted traffic to your Website.

One of the simplest and most solid ways to increase the flow of traffic to your Website is to offer more content. It has often been said that on the Internet, content is king. It is important to understand how more content can bring more visitors to your Website and how to generate content that is related to your particular Website.

Many Websites are actually company brochures that have been adapted to the Web. They merely describe a bit about the company or service and then add some contact information. Such Websites usually have about 5-10 separate html files. If these pages have a good amount of text it is possible to optimize them for several Keywords so that Web surfers may find the Website.

However, if these Websites are in highly competitive fields then it may be difficult to build a decent amount of traffic because Search Engines try to find the most important Websites that can answer a search query. Search Engine robots look for Keywords in the Meta tags and in the text on the pages to determine what the Website is all about. However, the Search Engines also look at the links on the various pages. If your main page is about bicycles, for example, and you have links to other pages on your Website relating to the same theme (perhaps racing bicycles, mountain bicycles, etc.) then the Search Engine will conclude that the Website is about bicycles. Since you have a lot of pages on this theme, your Website should rank higher than someone with a company brochure Website of a few pages.

Every product or service exists in some kind of context. Suppose you have a Hotel in a particular city. Instead of only listing information about your Hotel, you could give some pages about the history of the city where the Hotel is located or information about popular tourist attractions in that area. The possibilities are enormous.

With true Search Engine listings from SEO efforts, the benefits consistently out-weigh those of the PPC model:

Relevance is king when it comes to a user's decision to visit on your Website. A Website appears to be much more relevant and reliable when it is found in the first 10 results of millions of page matches. Google, Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, etc. have deemed your Website to be "The One" that best meets their needs.
Highly effective SEM campaigns should yield acquisition costs of ~$0.07 - $0.15 per visitor (Significantly less than PPC bids).
Sales conversion rates can be as high as 10%, but typically average 2 - 4% (2 - 4 times that of standard PPC models).
Your Website will receive the majority of the searching traffic; Search Engine users are conditioned and prefer to access those listings most recommended by the Search Engines.
Once your Website is ranked, you can stay there without your competitor manipulating a bid every 30 minutes throughout the day. The literal cost and aggravation of dedicating an employee to monitor your "Max Bid" for many Keywords is difficult to swallow.

Put everything into perspective. The Internet is obviously a rapidly growing marketplace. As this "child" continues to mature and as thousands of new Internet users get plugged in every single day, there is a growing audience looking for your products or services. Are you willing to use PPC models, which have tripled to quadrupled in average bids over the past two years, for the next year(s) to come? Longevity, ROI, and making the right decisions are key to your company's success.

A great analogy for SEO vs. PPC is a piece of cake. The main Organic Search Engine results should be your foundation and bulk of traffic, much like the cake itself. PPC models, Email Marketing, and other traffic-building vehicles should complement your SEM, like the icing on the cake.

Use true Search Engine results as your primary source for Website traffic. When you crunch the numbers from your PPC campaign, Search Engine Optimization makes more sense.

About Symbolic:
Symbolic is a unique multidisciplinary Interactive Agency. Since 1990 we’ve specialized in developing marketing tools that generate outstanding results for Clients from start-ups to Fortune 500 companies.

From our start we knew the best results for any marketing effort are achieved only when all the critical elements come together: Creative, Direct Marketing, Design, Production, Sales Strategy and Analysis.

We’ve applied this formula to every project we’ve created from our early days of producing half-hour television programming in Los Angeles, to producing Documentaries, Multi-Media projects, Websites, Online Presentations, Email Marketing Campaigns, Online Commercials & Tours and much more.

Our commitment to push for better results from our Clients’ projects has resulted in an industry high ‘Client Retention Rate’ as well as having our Clients’ projects recognized with over 125 'Awards for Excellence in Production' - including 54 Telly Awards, 11 Addy Awards and numerous Web Development Awards.

We are nothing if not innovators. Even though we have been at this for more than 17 years, we approach each project with the enthusiasm of a rookie, balanced by the experience and guidance of a seasoned veteran.

We don’t take on a Client unless we are convinced that our proven solutions will produce results beyond what they are experiencing now. Period.

We’ve only been wrong 4 times in 17 years.

Symbolic is the trusted partner for many companies including: Orlando World Center Marriott, Intel, Mercedes-Benz, Starwood Hotels & Resorts, The Phoenician, Waikiki Beach Marriott Resort & Spa, Amkor Technologies, JW Marriott Ihilani Resort & Spa at Ko Olina, Marriott Hawaii, Starwood Hawaii, Sheraton World Resort, JC Resorts, Sheraton Wild Horse Pass, Team Fuerza Motorsports, Triton Realty Partners, Motorola and many more.