Using Paid Ads Only Until Organic Listings Rank Well? Think Again…
Why do some mistakenly only use paid ads until their organic listings rank well?
I get to speak with a variety of business owners across a multitude of verticals every day and a statement I’ve heard a few times is – “Now that my SEO is working well, I’m going to turn off PPC and see what happens.”
Our team can usually predict what will happen i.e. you will lose traffic and thus sales and your competition will gain market share. Other reasons for why you shouldn’t negate paid ads in favor of organic listings are:
10-20% of the web is new each week with billions of new pages added to the internet each year.
This means that there are potentially millions of new pages competing for impressions from potential customers each month. PPC is the quickest way of driving traffic to your site for these new searches. In addition, PPC is highly accountable and has such transparency involved inherently that you can optimize for the highest ROAS possible. Organic listings while robust and cost effective in their own right are not the best way to quickly target new users (unless you start using black hat techniques that can get you quickly listed as #1 on a variety of engines, but can also get you banned.)
How specific are your organic listings?
The majority of search engine marketers will tell you that any worthwhile SEM campaign must have ads that are specific and actionable. Organic search can generate traffic for you, but traffic might not be from the most specific search terms for your products. Google stated, that “we know that people that type in specific search terms are more likely to generate a sale/conversion, and therefore we would want to place ads for you on the specific search terms most relevant to your business. Your ad text is very important. If you have the right messaging, you can get people that are interested in your products and services. Paid Ads are the only way you can control your messaging.” With organic ads you can control the messaging that appears, but your ad text will not be as specific as what you will find for paid ads.
Paid Ads and Organic Listings – is that the way to go?
The bottom line from Google is that “advertisers found in both paid and organic listings are more likely to generate traffic and have greater credibility with potential customers. Being in both organic and paid listings is valuable because it generates more traffic and increases your credibility. Having paid ads increases your chances of reaching your potential customers and compliments any existing organic listings for your site.”
