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PPC advertising vs. SEO advertising
© 2006 David Peterson
These following acronyms are probably
two of the most important terms in the world of Internet
advertising: PPC and SEO.
First we have PPC. This is also called
CPC. This stands for Pay Per Click or Cost Per Click
advertising. In other words you are paying each time someone clicks on
your link.
The second term, SEO stands for Search
Engine Optimization. SEO is the process of building a
website that is search engine friendly. Search engine
friendly means that Google can find your site and once found it
will know what the major keyword points you are trying to
make. Also it will determine when to show your URL to
prospective web surfers based on your keywords. There are many
other search engines but Google is largest for the moment
so you should optimize your site for them.
If you are a small business person
with limited funds which program should you do PPC or
SEO? My answer is both. A PPC program from
Yahoo or Google
is a relatively quick traffic generator. You give
those companies your keywords and if those keywords have
any traffic at all you will get some visitors. This type of
program can be up and running within 24 hours. The huge
advantage of the PPC program is the uptime speed and
quantity of targeted traffic. The huge downside is cost. PPC
programs can get expensive very fast. $0.10 per click doesn't
sound expensive until you get 10,000 clicks in a month. That
means you just spent $1,000 on that one search term!
A SEO program is extremely slow and
very tedious to get going. If you don't know what you are doing
it can cost upwards of $3,000 to have your site optimized.
The good news about a SEO program is
that you can learn how to optimize your site yourself. It
takes trial and error to see what is working. It also takes
knowledge of how search engines work to get them going
correctly. I personally use LivePerson.com's live chat to watch
the search terms for all of my sites in real time. Your
server's log files will also help you with your search terms.
You can bet your bottom dollar that if you do
everything correctly a SEO program will take you 90 days just to
start seeing results. In this case results mean getting
targeted traffic. You need to have time and patience to give
your SEO program a chance to work.
There is no doubt that for immediate
results the PPC route is clearly the way to go. You will get
immediate results. My suggestion is that as soon as you
put your first dollar into PPC you should start working on
Search Engine Optimization yourself. The reason is
90 to 180 days from now you can stop paying for some
of your PPC terms as the search engines natural
abilities start indexing and showing your web pages to
visitors. You need to force yourself to learn the SEO process. A
solid SEO program goes well beyond meta tags these days.
The ultimate goal of advertising is to
drive targeted traffic. If you can get SEO targeted
traffic vs. PPC targeted traffic then you will place a
lot of money on the bottom line of your business.
Placing a lot of money on the bottom line is
probably the ultimate goal of your business.
Sincerely,
David
Peterson
Author
of:
Been There - Done That
David
Peterson's Free Search Engine Optimization Guide
Please
send all correspondence to: questions@usreference.com
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