PPC vs Natural Search – A Cost Comparison Case Study

February 5, 2010
By Jay

The attraction of Pay Per Click (PPC) on-line advertising is undeniable. Every click costs virtually nothing, you merely get hold of the clicks you get, and you set your own daily budget so you recognize exactly how a lot of you’re visiting spend. Most importantly, your listing appears instantly.

On the opposite hand, a high ranking within the natural search results seems unobtainable. There’s a perception that tons of thousands of alternative businesses are competing for your keywords, and that produces it appear sort of a real rat-race. And it also appears like such a big mountain to climb; it’s true that it can take months to succeed in the first page for your target keywords. To form matters worse, thousands of opportunistic (and a few terribly dodgy) ‘SEO firms’ have emerged, wanting to create a quick and big buck out of market naivety. Therefore to CEOs, BDMs, promoting managers, webmasters, and business owners, the road to natural search ranking seems expensive, risky, and beset with traffic.

However does this mean you must forget natural search?

Definitely not!

Firstly, most user studies to this point have found that people pay additional attention to natural search results as a result of they’re additional relevant. That’s the foundation of the success of firms like Google and Yahoo (and the explanation they keep their indexing rules a secret).

What’s a lot of, it’s necessary to place things in perspective. Hundreds of thousands of alternative businesses may be competing for your keywords, but in most cases, they’re at least as confused and disheartened as you. Therefore the earlier you figure out the real story, the earlier you’ll have the jump on them.

And yes, it will take a whereas to succeed in the high, however as a result of your competition is – for the most half – traveling blind, your early progress will normally be quite quick. After all, for many businesses, it’s not until you reach the prime few pages that your progress can slow.

And again yes, there ARE some dodgy SEO corporations out there. But there are also some very good ones. (Attend WebProNews.com and join up to a forum if you would like to search out out who they are.) So 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.)

However let’s talk bottom line…

Is it more expensive to obtain a high ranking?

Certainly not! Compared with other sorts of advertising – even PPC in the long term – reaching the high of the rankings is NOT expensive. The subsequent case study explains why.

CASE STUDY

For the past year, I’ve been working arduous on the natural search results for my copywriting business, Divine Write. For my primary keyword, I’m now 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 on behalf of me, I’m an SEO copywriter, therefore writing articles is all in a day’s work. However had I paid an SEO copywriter to write my articles on behalf of me, I’d have spent approximately USD$five,000.

Over the identical period, I spent approximately USD$3,000 on Google AdWords (my ads appeared towards the prime of the paid listings).

Currently I hear what you’re saying; my natural search campaign definitely cost more in the primary year than my AdWords campaign. But currently that I’ve reached the top of Google.com, I’ve paused all my AdWords ads, so 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$three,000 next year on AdWords, and another USD$3,000 the year after that, and so on.

Of course, I have to retain my high ranking. If I used to be paying someone to write my articles, that would involve an investment of roughly USD$one,000 per year (a saving of 67% every year).

Thus it breaks down like this:

Google AdWords investment: a pair of yrs = $6,000, three yrs = $nine,000, 4 yrs = $twelve,000, five yrs = $fifteen,000

Natural search investment: two yrs = $six,000, 3 yrs = $7,000, four yrs = $eight,000, five yrs = $9,000

Conclusion

Clearly the competition for keywords in the copywriting field isn’t as fierce as in a ton of different industries, thus the particular dollar investment mentioned during this case study could not apply on to your business. The vital thing to understand is that – over time – a high ranking within the natural search results will really cost but a high position in the (arguably less effective) paid listings.

Conjointly, these figures are primarily based on me submitting articles to numerous article banks on the Net myself. (This is often a routine task requiring little skill. You should be in a position to get an inventory of fifty or more article submit sites from your SEO copywriter or consultant for as very little as USD$99.)

Do you want to stay ahead of the pack in the race for the top Google rankings? Visit: increase web traffic. With increase web traffic you can quickly and easily get first spot on Google every day, without wasting another dollar ever again! Start increase web traffic, time for you to be first on Google!

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