21 replies to this topic

[iloveseo2]

Hi all,

Someone today told me that AdWords is irrelevant because people don't trust AdWords as much as they trust SEO.

What is your experience?

Thanks!

[projectphp]

My experience is that free advice is rarely worth the price you pay

[nethy]

My experience is that free advice is rarely worth the price you pay

And rarely heeded if it is.

relevant is an interesting choice of word

What is your experience?

My experience is that it has a different worth to different people or organisations. It has now worth on its own.

AdWords is irrelevant because people don't trust AdWords as much as they trust SEO.

Though it does not work equally for everyone & every situation and may not be the correct choice of budget expenditure, it is (IMO) one of the most widely relevant advertisement mediums. Any sign of expected good ROI from SEO is at the least a strong indicator the ppc is 'relevant,' if not nessecary.

The grain of truth in this statement is the fact that ppc ads achieve fewer clicks to equally visible organic results. This is a reality of advertising. IMO this is equivalent to saying "what you, your marketing materials, & your site say about your products is irrelevant because people don't trust your words (such as advertising) as much as they trust p2p word of mouth (eg customer reviews). While 'consumer behaviour' statement is true, the conclusion does not follow from the statement.

Because of the way ppc & Search engine traffic realities work, this fact is not highly relevant to the desicion of whether or not to employ ppc. It certainly is not prohibitive to effective ppc.

[RiYo]

Hi Nethy I have to disagree with you saying that ... "The grain of truth in this statement is the fact that ppc ads achieve fewer clicks to equally visible organic results. This is a reality of advertising."

When your Click Through Rate (CTR) is good enough for Google there is a big chance that they will put your ad ABOVE the normal organic listings on the left hand side! This results in a very high number of clicks and in most instances even more than the 1st Organic position on that same left side of Google. Whether or not this is what you want is another discussion.

PPC works great for me. It works very well especially when you are not found in the top 5 of the organic listings. The negative side of it is that you need to pay for it. But the positive side is that you can be number one in 5 minutes.

Richard

[BlueSky]

IMO this is equivalent to saying "what you, your marketing materials, & your site say about your products is irrelevant because people don't trust your words (such as advertising) as much as they trust p2p word of mouth (eg customer reviews). While 'consumer behaviour' statement is true, the conclusion does not follow from the statement.

I'm not sure what you are saying here, but most businesses would prefer to occupy 2 positions above the fold on the page.... rather than 1 or no positions at all. It's that simple. Oh, and did I mention that PPC is easy...

[projectphp]

Who even knows what is paid and what isn't?

Such a generalised question, with such a generlaised answer, is so non-specific as to be useless. The statement is:
1. True for some ppl, some of the time.
2. False for some people some of teh time.
3. Irrelevant for some of the people some of the time.
4. Irrelevant completely for a marketer who has th ability to test.

Pick the answer that most applies to you

[BBCoach]

For the last five or so years I've been doing an informal survey of those unfortunate enough to come within my personal space and were willing to talk with me. I always ask strangers how they search, what's they're favorite search engines, do they click on the paid links, which do they trust more paid links or the organic links and why, how many pages they'll go to before re-phrasing their search, etc.

What I've found is very interesting. Most women (80%) trust paid links more than the organic links. Their reasoning is that if someone is willing to spend money to advertise, then they're trustworthy. Surprisingly to me, the women that are "techies" (60%/40%) mostly feel the same way. Men are mixed more than woman. I've found that the more "techie" a guy is the less likely he is to click on a paid link (70%). The unskilled internet male will trust a paid link for the same reason women do (which is trustworthy) (almost 90%). College age individuals are a hard bunch to crack. All I ever came away with from that group is that they're impatient and will click anything close to what they're looking for, but they love Google and trust the content on Wikipedia. Younger kids in high school are the same as college kids.

So are PPCs irrelevant? Depends on who it is you're marketing to and like nethy has said "it can't hurt."

[jspope]

Hi!

Where should you get your traffic? From any legitimate source that makes you money!

Organic listings, of course, are an excellent source of traffic. This traffic source is really not free as you either have to pay someone for help, invest your own time, or both.

Pay-per-click can also be very effective. Some Internet marketers have found Google AdWords to be more effective (or targeted) than the organic listings. Some Internet users click on paid results (not organic results) when they are actually ready to buy. You can qualify your prospects ("SEO Secrets Only $197"). You can get almost instant traffic without waiting to be crawled by the search engines.

If you made $10 for every $4 expenditure, how many times would you do it? As many times as possible!

Of course, you need to test (track results) to see whether your ad or other traffic source is making you money or not.

PPC or SEO? How about both?

Regards,

Stephen :-)

Edited by projectphp, 24 March 2008 - 07:46 AM.
Spaces? Y?

[nethy]

When your Click Through Rate (CTR) is good enough for Google there is a big chance that they will put your ad ABOVE the normal organic listings on the left hand side! This results in a very high number of clicks and in most instances even more than the 1st Organic position on that same left side of Google. Whether or not this is what you want is another discussion.

I was simply stating that the majority of clicks on a serp happen on the organic side.

I agree with you, this is not a problem prohibitive to ppc advertising. It certainly does not make ppc irrelevent.

I'm not sure what you are saying here, but most businesses would prefer to occupy 2 positions above the fold on the page.... rather than 1 or no positions at all. It's that simple. Oh, and did I mention that PPC is easy..

.

I was saying that some facts about communicating to consumers are simply part of the landscape. And that they do not make anything irrelevant.

I was saying that as
'consumers place more faith in p2p reviews'
so
'searchers are more likely to click on organic results (usually, on average & all els equal).'
and that
neither of these facts should lead you to the conclusion that advertising should be avoided.

[Alan Perkins]

Someone today told me that AdWords is irrelevant because people don't trust AdWords as much as they trust SEO

Sell your shares in Google then, because a large chunk of their billions in revenues comes from Adwords, and very little comes from SEO!

If Adwords was really so "irrelevant" you'd have to ask yourself why so many organizations use it.

[mcanerin]

"irrelevent" is actually a bad choice of terms, since PPC is usually far more "relevent" than SEO. You can use negatives in PPC, where in SEO you can show up for the strangest terms at times.

I think what the person saying that to you meant to imply (unless they were utterly clueless as to how PPC works) is that it's not useful enough to be worth doing, or that the ROI is too poor to justify the effort involved, or something similar to that.

I have to disagree, with a qualification. Almost all sites benefit from a combination of both PPC and SEO. There are only two exceptions:

1. Pure "hobby" sites where the goal isn't to make money or impress anyone but you and your friends. Most people's blogs and MySpace pages fall into this type of category. Although there are some highly profitable blogs, most are not, and not intended to be. Using PPC in this case is akin to publishing a book using a vanity press - costly and only useful to massage your ego.

2. Pure affiliate sites. These are often pretty much duplicate content and, depending on the affiliate program involved, can be virtually impossible to SEO (some companies only allow you to use their own pre-packages pages, for example). In this case, SEO won't help you, but PPC can be very effective.

If you look closely at these two examples, you'll see that there is a continum involved. At one end, you have pure information or branding sites, with no intent to profit, and at the other end, you have pure commerce sites, with no intent to inform or brand.

Ian

[nethy]

1. Pure "hobby" sites where the goal isn't to make money or impress anyone but you and your friends. Most people's blogs and MySpace pages fall into this type of category. Although there are some highly profitable blogs, most are not, and not intended to be. Using PPC in this case is akin to publishing a book using a vanity press - costly and only useful to massage your ego.

This is an interesting point. The Hobby sites. Or even many other organizations (including commercial ones) that are not clearly commercial. They still have certain goals or reasons for doing things.

In some cases, actually authoring the site is the purpose (maybe a learning or other goal)

In other cases, they may have a more tangible goal (eg personal branding, notoriety ) goal. If SEO is a way of achieving those goals, is ppc not?

Most sites in this category have their labour/capital values skewed towards labour, that explains reluctance to use ppc. But then again, these can often get traffic for a fraction of the cost of commercial campaign (because of the keywords they need to bid on).

[Jill]

Almost all sites benefit from a combination of both PPC and SEO. There are only two exceptions:

I have one more for you.

Sites selling premium SEO services. We're still testing, but so far, it doesn't appear that PPC is working well for this. (That said, we don't have a huge budget which might make a difference.)

[Bablorub]

My experience is that free advice is rarely worth the price you pay

Absolutely agree with you

[Jill]

My experience is that free advice is rarely worth the price you pay

Guess I better close down the forum and newsletter then...