PPC v Natural Search – A Cost Comparison Case Study
The attraction of Pay Per Click (PPC) online advertising is undeniable. Each click costs virtually nothing, you only pay for the clicks you get, and you set your own daily budget so you know exactly how much you’re going to spend. Most importantly, your listing appears instantly.
On the other hand, a high
ranking in the natural search results seems unobtainable. There’s a
perception that hundreds of thousands of other businesses are competing for your
keywords, and that makes it seem like a real rat-race. And it also seems like
such a big mountain to climb; it’s true that it can take months to reach
the first page for your target keywords. To make matters worse, thousands of
opportunistic (and some very dodgy) ‘SEO companies’ have emerged,
looking to make a quick and big buck out of market naivety. So to CEOs, BDMs,
marketing managers, webmasters, and business owners, the road to natural search
ranking seems expensive, risky, and beset with traffic.
But does this
mean you should forget natural search?
Definitely not!
Firstly, most user studies to date have found that people pay more attention
to natural search results because they’re more relevant. That’s the
foundation of the success of companies like Google and Yahoo (and the reason
they keep their indexing rules a secret).
What’s more, it’s
important to put things in perspective. Hundreds of thousands of other
businesses may be competing for your keywords, but in most cases, they’re
at least as confused and disheartened as you. So the sooner you figure out the
real story, the sooner you’ll have the jump on them.
And yes, it
can take a while to reach the top, but because your competition is – for
the most part – traveling blind, your early progress will normally be quite
quick. In fact, for most businesses, it’s not until you reach the top few
pages that your progress will slow.
And again yes, there ARE some dodgy
SEO companies out there. But there are also some very good ones. (Go to WebProNews.com and sign up
to a forum if you want to find 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.)
But let’s
talk bottom line…
Is it more expensive to obtain a high ranking?
Certainly not! In comparison with other forms of advertising – even
PPC in the long run – reaching the top of the rankings is NOT expensive.
The following case study explains why.
CASE STUDY
For the
past year, I’ve been working hard 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 approximately 900,000 search results). I’ve done
this simply by writing helpful articles and submitting them for publication on
the Internet. Luckily for me, I’m an SEO copywriter, so writing articles is
all in a day’s work. But had I paid an SEO copywriter to write my articles
for me, I’d have spent approximately USD$5,000.
Over the same
period, I spent approximately USD$3,000 on Google AdWords (my ads appeared
towards the top of the paid listings).
Now I hear what you’re
saying; my natural search campaign definitely cost more in the first year than
my AdWords campaign. But now 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 at least another USD$3,000 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 was paying someone to write my articles, that would
involve an investment of approximately USD$1,000 per year (a saving of 67% each
year).
So it breaks down like this:
Google AdWords
investment:
2 yrs = $6,000, 3 yrs = $9,000, 4 yrs = $12,000, 5 yrs =
$15,000
Natural search investment:
2 yrs = $6,000, 3 yrs =
$7,000, 4 yrs = $8,000, 5 yrs = $9,000
Conclusion
Obviously the competition for keywords in the
copywriting field isn’t as fierce as in a lot of other industries, so the
actual dollar investment discussed in this case study may not apply directly to
your business. The important thing to understand is that – over time –
a high ranking in the natural search results can actually cost less than a high
position in the (arguably less effective) paid listings.
Also, these
figures are based on me submitting articles to various article banks on the
Internet myself. (This is a routine task requiring little skill. You should be
able to purchase a list of 50 or more article submit sites from your SEO
copywriter or consultant for as little as USD$99.)
