First off let me just say that I use these forums religiously, they are invaluable in shaping my beliefs in what i think is the right combination in creating successful sites. I used to think, and to some degree still think you place user experience first when designing new sites, but I think it's becoming more evident that user expereince is predicated on SEO, so that needs to always been in the forefront of any design initiatives.
Having said that, I deal with a consulting group who thinks that our product does not need to rank high in a natural listing because it has been successfully branded and that it only needs to be supported by a strong ppc campaign. They think having a top 3 ranking in the naturals is only worth, say 10 sales a day, I beg to differ. Competition is stiff and the consumer can be fooled or duped into easily buying our product or a knockoff from someone else. I want the user to buy from our site, or sites developed by us. We are # 3 in Google and I dont see that changing because #1 has over 5,000 reciprocal links, but in Yahoo no effort has been made to boost a natural ranking of ohhhh.. ZERO! Only ppc campaigns abound, I think this is wrong wrong wrong....Im looking for a pros and cons list here of ppc versus naturals.....
I guess it depends on the industry, but in my industry, my natural listings generate many times more sales than the ppc. I still do ppc, but my return is never that great, especially on terms where each click is $4.00
But there's been studies done that show theat when a user is shopping for a product or service (not research), that they only click on the sponsored listings 1 out of every 4 searches. And with that I know that I have a lot of click fraud on my account.
My new theory is just to abandon ppc and invest that 10k a month into advertising links
Shawn,I always thought, or I should say assumed, and that's where we marketers get in trouble, that a discerning user might go to a natural listing instead of an advertised listing, but perhaps it makes more sense to go to an advertised listing if i'm shopping versus research.
Hurricane, I'm not so sure when selling a product its wise to completely abandon ppc unless of course its $5 a click and you're not getting the ctr...
Hurricane, I'm not so sure when selling a product its wise to completely abandon ppc unless of course its $5 a click and you're not getting the ctr...
Actually I forgot one important advantage of PPC, it shows your ads on websites which run AdSense, I use PPC anyway even if the keyword is #1 of natural ranking for this reason.
I didn't say PPC was bad, it's just worse than natural high ranking, that's a comparison.
My approach has always been to cover all my bases, the search marketing industry is always in flux, so I always do both for my clients, as some people look to sponsored results and others look right at the organic serps. Cover all your bases.
bcombs, you have to take yourself out of the equation though because, you are not your demo, and you know how to play the game. I've coined this phrase assumptive or non assumptive web development in regards to "never assume you know what your user will do..." I'm baffled and amazed every day actually and thats why It distresses me to hear a consultant working on our behalf telling us not to worry about natural listings....
A certain travel company has the #1 organic and #1 PPC listing in Google. I happen to believe they know what they are doing. I have PPC campaigns for all my top keywords right now. I just don't try to get #1 on the PPC side.
According to AtlasDMT research , there is nearly a 40% drop off in the 'click potential' of a paid placement from first position to second position in Google. The difference between first and second in Overture wasn't quite as pronounced but still significant at about 23%-
Did anyone see this form Webpronews today???? There is no way that it is that significant. For the benefits of this string, There cannnot be that much of a difference between 1-2-3 unless they are saying in reference to Google, that positions 1 and 2 are at the top of Google and then position 3 is on the right side of the page...THEN that possibility exsists, but 40%????? Come on....
But they did say " click potential" thats a pretty broad based term for a study now that I think about it..... all of our links have click potential....
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