Ppc Vs. Seo: Apply The Mantra! | Orangesoda Blog
Short post from me today, and many of you will be very tired of reading about this subject. If thats you, feel free to move on to other posts. You wont hurt my feelings.
However, there is still a large number of small business owners and marketing folk who persist in the notion that if you rank top-10 organically for a keyword (sometimes even top-20 or 30), that you shouldnt bid for it with your PPC campaign. The reason is because you dont want to cannibalize sales from SEO, which makes complete sense.
Except when that doesnt happen.
Far too many times, people assume that if youre running PPC and SEO concurrently for a given keyword, PPC is surely gobbling up sales that would they would otherwise be getting for free. It could be happening, but how do you know? Cuz you better KNOW. In this age of ultra-online-trackability-for-free (thank you again, Google Analytics), why would you assume anything with your business on the line?
Let go of the assumptions, mostly propogated by SEO-philes and SEO-only agencies looking to pad their numbers (you bet I went there).
You have to apply the mantra of online marketingTEST IT.
A few questions to help you find out whats really happening:
Have you tested both scenarios (SEO only, SEO and PPC together) long enough to get statistically significant results?
You cant run both for a week (unless you get a whole heapin heck-a-bunch of traffic to your site) and expect to KNOW if PPC is robbing from SEO. You have to test each scenario until your pile of data is bulky enough to be conclusive. Make sure, however, that youre not testing through seasonal highs and lows that might skew your results.
Are the conversion gains from PPC+SEO noticeably above your SEO-only totals? Are they within your efficiency thresholds?
If you answered yes to both of those questions, you should keep running PPC. Even if PPC appears to take a small slice of your conversions from your SEO efforts, whos going to argue with more overall profitable conversions?
Are your competitors bidding on your high-ranking SEO keywords?
Youre not doing this search thing in a vacuum. Your competitors are trying to make you homeless and theyll happily accept you not bidding on your SEO sacred-cow keywords so they can skim more PPC conversions for themselves at a lower cost. Something to think about
Its all about the data!
Ill forego the discussion on conversions that result in recurring revenue. Suffice it to say that if customers re-up with no further acquisition cost, this should never have been an issue in the first place.
And lets not get into the opportunity you have with PPC campaigns to generate more focused content for a landing page that would convert better than just some deep link on your website.
For now, lets stick to the simple truth that we can all afford to live byWhen you can track it, always test it. Always.
Source: www.orangesoda.com