Great post. Truly appreciate your effort. According to me people should be looking out for PPC only if they are not appearing in the top 3 of SERP’s. To me searches usually look at the PPC ads only if they did not find any relevant results from the organic search. So, if you are very good at SEO i.e. among the top 3…why do you spend on PPC? spend money to optimize your site for natural listings….to be number 1….n when talk of conversion…it all boils down to the landing page, pricing,merchandise and all that stuff…so for me….SEO would be the first option……n i would recommend PPC complementing the SEO efforts..

cheers

What I feel is, the application of SEO or PPC differs from business to business depending on the size of the business. For example lets think of amazon. I think amazon should be better off trying out for SEO as searches normally look at the organic results first n then move onto the search results if they cant find

When they ask that question, I always tell them it is important to do both! PPC works well in the beginning as we can have their ads up instantly and then test and use data to target better, higher converting keywords that we can use for SEO purposes later.

At the same time, it’s easier for me to optimize my clients for specific keywords because I am in Fresno, CA! This makes the job easier because of lack of SEO competition here. But with that said, I don’t ignore PPC.

As we slowly start ranking in their local areas for their specific keywords, then I will slowly start backing down their PPC campaign. It works well for the clients and they enjoy seeing their businesses coming up in both sponsored listings and natural results.

Great post though! I love both PPC and SEO – just an online marketing geek!

To be honest you are not comparing like with like. It is like comparing TV to Radio advertising.

If done well and you dont have to pay anyone to do your SEO. SEO wins hands down. Why? For an ecom site the ROI is much greater. PPC is lower. I worked on an ecom site where the organic ROI was in the Thousands and PPC is the Tens. If done well SEO is cheap. PPC by its nature is not.

So the argument:

PPC traffic converts at 2.03% versus 1.26% for natural traffic.
PPC visitors spent about 10% more money on sites than natural visitors.

Doesnt wash because you are having to pay.

But where PPC does come into its own is Speed, as pointed out. And that is the thrill of the game. And why we all enjoy it.

Cool, I just wrote a post on this the other day. I like what you have said about testing. But I’d like to add an alternate take on the topic that both are necessary for brands to have fully optimized conversion rates.

In a nutshell, branding and performance go hand in hand because the branding creates the awareness that helps consumers to feel comfortable clicking through the search result link that they’ve become familiar with.

I would tend to agree with your comments regarding PPC but SEO should not be ignored and there’s no reason why a quality site with intentions of promoting online shouldn’t adopt a blended approach.