PPC vs Natural Search – A Cost Comparison Case Study
February 1, 2010 – 6:43 amThe attraction of Pay Per Click (PPC) on-line advertising is undeniable. Each click costs just about nothing, you simply purchase the clicks you get, and you set your own daily budget so you recognize exactly how abundant you’re going to spend. Most importantly, your listing appears instantly.
On the opposite hand, a high ranking in the natural search results seems unobtainable. There’s a perception that hundreds of thousands of alternative businesses are competing for your keywords, and that produces it seem like a real rat-race. And it also appears like such a massive mountain to climb; it’s true that it will take months to achieve the primary page for your target keywords. To create matters worse, thousands of opportunistic (and a few terribly dodgy) ‘SEO corporations’ have emerged, trying to form a fast and massive buck out of market naivety. So to CEOs, BDMs, selling managers, webmasters, and business house owners, the road to natural search ranking appears expensive, risky, and beset with traffic.
But does this mean you ought to forget natural search?
Positively not!
Firstly, most user studies so far have found that folks pay more attention to natural search results because they’re a lot of relevant. That’s the foundation of the success of corporations like Google and Yahoo (and the reason they keep their indexing rules a secret).
What’s additional, it’s important to place things in perspective. Hundreds of thousands of alternative businesses could be competing for your keywords, however in most cases, they’re at least as confused and disheartened as you. Therefore the sooner you figure out the real story, the earlier you’ll have the jump on them.
And yes, it will take a while to reach the prime, however as a result of your competition is – for the most part – traveling blind, your early progress can normally be quite quick. After all, for most businesses, it’s not until you reach the high few pages that your progress can slow.
And again yes, there ARE some dodgy SEO companies out there. But there also are some very sensible ones. (Head to WebProNews.com and sign on to a forum if you want to search out out who they are.) Thus long as you know the basics of SEO you won’t be taken for a ride. (See SEO for CEOs for a rundown of SEO basics in layperson’s terms.)
But let’s talk bottom line…
Is it a lot of expensive to get a high ranking?
Certainly not! As compared with other styles of advertising – even PPC in the future – reaching the high of the rankings is NOT expensive. The following case study explains why.
CASE STUDY
For the past year, I’ve been working onerous on the natural search results for my copywriting business, Divine Write. For my primary keyword, I’m currently on page 1 of Google.com (out of roughly 900,000 search results). I’ve done this simply by writing useful articles and submitting them for publication on the Internet. Luckily for me, I’m an SEO copywriter, so writing articles is all during a day’s work. But had I paid an SEO copywriter to put in writing my articles for me, I’d have spent approximately USD$5,000.
Over the identical amount, I spent approximately USD$three,000 on Google AdWords (my ads appeared towards the top of the paid listings).
Currently I hear what you’re saying; my natural search campaign definitely price more in the first year than my AdWords campaign. But now that I’ve reached the prime of Google.com, I’ve paused all my AdWords ads, therefore I’m not paying anything. If I hadn’t chased the natural search results, I’d have continued paying for AdWords, spending a minimum of another USD$3,000 next year on AdWords, and another USD$three,000 the year after that, and therefore on.
In fact, I’ve got to retain my high ranking. If I used to be paying someone to jot down my articles, that would involve an investment of approximately USD$1,000 per year (a saving of sixty seven% every year).
Therefore it breaks down like this:
Google AdWords investment: a pair of yrs = $vi,000, three yrs = $nine,000, 4 yrs = $twelve,000, five yrs = $fifteen,000
Natural search investment: two yrs = $vi,000, 3 yrs = $seven,000, 4 yrs = $eight,000, 5 yrs = $nine,000
Conclusion
Clearly the competition for keywords in the copywriting field isn’t as fierce as in an exceedingly ton of alternative industries, therefore the actual dollar investment mentioned during this case study may not apply on to your business. The important factor to perceive is that – over time – a high ranking within the natural search results will truly price less than a high position within the (arguably less effective) paid listings.
Additionally, these figures are primarily based on me submitting articles to numerous article banks on the Net myself. (This is often a routine task requiring very little skill. You ought to be in a position to get a list of fifty or more article submit sites from your SEO copywriter or consultant for as very little as USD$99.)
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Tags: Internet Business, internet marketing, online business, Pay Per Click, PPC, ppc advertising