23 replies to this topic

[BBCoach]

Trish your organic rankings are NOT affected by whether or not you have PPC campaigns. Your VP of IT is wrong to think that way. They're two separate entities.

It sounds like you know where the money is coming from, but have you analyzed where you organically rank compared with the PPC campaigns? My opinion is that if you rank in the top 5-20 organically, then you might be wasting money running a PPC that competes against that. However, you MUST determine whether or not the PPC is canabalizing the organic link. The only way to do that is using historical data before the PPC began or to turn off select PPCs and see how things go. Bad season to do that right now so you might want to wait a month or two to test it.

Each industry is different on how their customers react to their SERPS. For example, if you sell paintball stuff most of your clients will be between 8 and 25 years of age. That group tends to click every link going down to 40 or 50 to find what they're looking for. Older clients tend to not go past 20 links before refining their search. Men and women also differ in how they look for information. Do your customers tend to search for things using 3-4 or more words or do they tend to use 1 or 2 words. So who are your customers? Do you know how they tend to use SEs? Discovering the habits of your customers when they do a search is a very big key in developing your SEO and PPC campaigns. Your starting place is analyzing (with a fine tooth comb) your log files and your PPCs.

Lastly, don't forget to try and figure out why you're not getting the conversions. What was the customer's search and which page did you send them to. A little story. I consulted with a very large company that was spending around $15 million/yr on PPCs and their conversions were lousy. A simple look at where they directed traffic compared to what the query was showed that their PPCs were very poorly setup. They were sending most of their traffic to large category pages and the customer had to drill down 3 or 4 categories to get to the product they were looking for. Most customers simply went away. Sometimes they didn't even send them to the right category! That marketing person didn't last long after my consultation. It's some basic stuff, but you'd be surprised how many people do a shotgun approach to setting up PPCs.

Good luck!

[Jill]

Hang on guys! The shopping comparison stuff shows up in the organic rankings, and that might be what the boss was thinking. If you move away from those, you could lose a lot of traffic if your main pages are not showing up in the organic rankings.

[BBCoach]

Jill which shopping comparison stuff are you talking about? I have never seen this on G. Maybe I get to learn something new. Any searches I can run to observe what you're talking about?

[sweimh]

WOW

Thanks everyone.. I am pretty sure the ROI was in the black - I think for a $5000 a month campaign.. we got $15K in return.. This place is crazy.. My thinking is to have the PPC because real estate is so competitive especially for a more generic term(s) that we need the PPC for exposure.

Seriously? I'm not terribly familiar with the PPC aspect of things yet, but if I'm spending $7500 ($5000 with additional 50% overhead) and I am getting 15K, it still wouldn't be bad.


ops, wrong quote. I was referring to http://www.highranki...mp;#entry268948

[RiYo]

sweimh,

I will be honest with you, ... I have not understand this way of thinking either. In my opinion it is an offline-marketing-way-of-thinking . If I can spend 5K to make 15K I would be fine with that LOL

richard

[maleman]

If I can spend 5K to make 15K I would be fine with that LOL

I'd be fine with that too... Fine as frog hair!

I'd even be willing to invest. I'll put up $2500 for half of that $15K...LOL!

[torka]

Jill which shopping comparison stuff are you talking about? I have never seen this on G. Maybe I get to learn something new. Any searches I can run to observe what you're talking about?

If this is what I think she's talking about, try running a search on "digital cameras".

Now YMMV, but at the #7 position, I see a listing from Shopping.com, and at #10 I see PriceGrabber.com. At both of these, as a merchant you submit a feed to the shopping comparison engine and pay them when someone clicks through to your site (basically, PPC). Shopping.com calls it "generating a lead," PriceGrabber.com calls it "cost per click" (CPC).

And there they are in the organic listings on Google for a product-related query.

So somebody searching for a digital camera can see these two shopping comparison engines in the top 10 on G, click through to one or the other of them and find a company that way, even if the company's own product page doesn't rank well at all for that query. And if the company's product page does rank in the top 10 on its own, the shopping comparison engines are a way to get even more exposure -- or to "cannibalize" your 'free" organic traffic, depending on your point of view.

Pretty much same as AdWords, except instead of seeing the advertisers links down the right hand side of the page or across the top of the page, the shopper has to click through to the comparison engine (where for their trouble they get the ability to sort and filter the listings according to their own criteria, unlike AdWords).

Either way, though, to the seller, it's all PPC advertising.

--Torka

[BBCoach]

If that's what Jill was referring to, then yes it would not be wise to stop those if they're making you money. My reply was specifically dealing with the SE PPCs. I get a little too focused sometimes. I have several campaigns running at those two shopping sites as well as others. Mostly my products out rank theirs anyways.

Thanks torka I kinda thought that's what she meant, but wasn't for sure. I thought I might be missing something else.

Merry Christmas!

[Jill]

Yep, what Torka said is what I was talking about, exactly!