The cost of pay-per-click advertising is high and rising. Click fraud (estimated by some as high as 35%) only makes things worse and increases the cost of clicks. And now, more and more people say they don’t click on sponsored ads. Why do you ask? Simple, they don’t trust that they will get relevant information when they click on a sponsored ad instead of an organic link. Netizens now understand from personal experience that PPC ads simply go to the highest bidder without regard to relevance. In the early days (ie 3-5 years ago); this was not the case. Back then, relevance mattered (Overture, now Yahoo, was a leader in this area).

So, is pay-per-click where you should be spending your hard-earned marketing money? And if so, how can success be measured? The short answers are: maybe and not easily.

First let me say, Pay-Per-Click (PPC) and organic SEO (Search Engine Optimization) are two completely different animals. Each has its place in the world, but neither is a direct or complete replacement for the other.

There is one fact that stands out however. In almost all cases, organic search engine optimization will eventually achieve lower costs per click than pay per click. The reason is quite simple. PPC, in addition to rising costs and fraud, requires ongoing (infinite) payments to keep the flow of visitors to your website, while organic SEO requires (usually a more significant upfront cost) to achieve maximum visibility (ranking among top 10), but then it costs very little to maintain search engine placement over time.

But how can you measure success? Using cost per click to measure the effectiveness of these two disparate marketing options is like measuring travel time in miles per hour. Pay per click is an advertising expense, while search engine optimization is more like a capital investment. Both can significantly increase a business’s online visibility, but it’s important to recognize that one is an ongoing expense while the other is a short-term investment with long-term benefits.

pay per click marketing

Advertising spend like TV ads, print ads, billboards, and yes, pay-per-click marketing all have one thing in common. They only exist as long as the sponsor is willing to pay for them. When payments cease; the ads disappear (and so does the business derived from the ads). In some cases, ads may continue to exist for a period of time (think magazines at your dentist’s office or ads that end up on YouTube). And obviously there’s a little residual benefit that occurs because visitors bookmarked your site or remembered your domain name. However, for the most part, pay-per-click marketing campaigns simply disappear when you stop paying for them.

Does cost per click make sense for PPC? Absolutely! There is a definite point in time when your PPC campaign starts and when it stops. And so there is a direct correlation (for the most part) with making a sale or getting a lead on a PPC visitor.

Search Engine Optimization

Unlike pay-per-click, organic search engine optimization does not have a clear time when the revenue (ie visitors) from the campaign ends. When you stop paying for organic search engine optimization, the results continue for an extended period of time, usually many months or even years. Assuming your organic SEO investment was well planned and successful (i.e. top 10 positions for one or more quality keyword phrases), your website visitors will continue long after payments have stopped.

So can cost per click effectively measure the real value of organic SEO? The simple answer is no. You can’t. You can absolutely tell how much money was spent on the organic SEO campaign, but the total number of visitors coming to your site can’t be accurately determined until the organic search link no longer appears in the search engine results pages. search.

Quality organic SEO takes time

It is also important to point out “the other side of the coin”. Running an effective organic SEO campaign takes time. Initial results may not appear for weeks or even months. Organic search engine optimization requires patience. Unlike PPC, SEO does not provide immediate results. Remember, if your website isn’t in the top 30 (first three pages of results), you probably won’t get much return on your organic SEO investment. I have seen reports showing that 98% of all searches stop on the first three pages of search results. That means only 2% of searchers go to page four and beyond. Think about your own use of search engines. Even if you get to page three, how much attention are you really paying to the websites you’re visiting? If you don’t see what you’re looking for in 2 seconds or less, you’re hitting the back arrow, returning to the search engine, and moving on to the next link.

Conclusion

The bottom line: Whether your business needs your marketing campaign up and running right away or you need to test the ROI and conversion potential of candidate organic SEO phrases; pay per click is the way to go. PPC can also be very successful when implemented and maintained by a trained professional to maximize your ROI. But, if you want the absolute best long-term value for your marketing buck, organic SEO can’t be beat.