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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.)
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