SEO Video Blog - ROI - Organic vs PPC #35
Script:
- Nick -
Welcome to this weeks SEO video blog, you often see articles and companies asking this simple question, what returns the better investment, organic search engine optimisation or pay per click advertisements?
- James -
It can be a difficult question to answer and we think that it is individual to each company trying to market on the internet, however we also think that a correctly organized organic campaign can be more effective in the long run in terms of cost.
- Nick -
When we first thought about answering this question, user behavior came to mind, so we found this eye tracking report from enquiro. This shows a very nice visual representation of where an average Google user looks once they have performed a search query.
- James -
You can see from the image that the user naturally looks towards the top left hand side of the results and in particular the first Pay Per Click result and top 2 organic listings. This suggests that if you want to gain the full benefit from your campaign then you need to be in the top 3 positions.
What this means is if you are going pay for your listings with Google Adwords then you really have to be the highest bidder in order to be the first listing.
- Nick -
With this in mind we thought we would use the information that the external keyword tool provides to estimate the cost of optimising for a couple of phrases, organic vs PPC.
You can see we have taken the average search volume for the phrases ‘air conditioning’ and ‘web design’, then the click through rate or CTR based on 3%. 3 -5 % is pretty average for CTR (Click through rate), but it can vary with each campaign. We have then multiplied the CTR with the CPC or cost per click to get a monthly cost.
So as you can see for ‘air conditioning’ it would cost on average £1200 per month to be in position 1-3 on Google Adwords, to be position one constantly it would it would undoubtedly cost most. Organically Creare would charge somewhere in the region of £500 per month for this phrase.
The other phrase we analyzed ‘web design’ would cost Creare over £5000 per month to be in position 1-3 on Google’s sponsored listings, so our organic listing provides us a much more profitable return on investment.
- James -
Of course you do have to remember that with Pay Per Click the results are instant, but with organic SEO there are a large amount of factors which contribute to a site performing in a search engine organically. What this means is that an organic campaign has a time scale attached to it. Going back to what we said at the start, organic will provide a better ROI, but you have to patient and expect to see a fluctuation in results until the domain reaches the required authority to list in the top 3 positions.
- Nick -
There is no reason of course that you cannot run Pay Per Click campaigns along side your organic strategy in order to reap the benefits of both. Thanks for watching if you have any question or comments please leave them on You tube or the supporting blog post.
Enquiro eye tracking report on Google
