hello all.

I have a keyword ranked #1 on google. I contact a few clients and 1 client asked me . Why would i pay 397$ /month for your website when I can pay 10 bucks per click on google adwords? Whats the big prize of seo when theres Pay per click marketing and im guaranteed to stay at number 1.

#1 There are so many peoples out there using adblocker inside his browser
#2 a good place on google is like a personal reputation and thats better than any advertisement
#3 everony can buy ads, but not many can rank inside top5..

good luck

How much traffic does your site get? If the numbers work out, he might be right.

How many clicks do you get on your site for the $397/month you charge vs how many clicks can he get for $10?

If you can get over 40 x the traffic or at least generate 40 x as many leads then you have a good reason. It's just maths.

$400 / $10 per click = 40 clicks
If your KW gets 1000 searches, then when you rank him he'll get like 420 clicks.

You can pretty much tell him to finger your buthole, and he'll still pay you.

If you can get him more than 40 clicks, then you can justify it. If not, try offering something else.

That was a good fucking point he made OP. When I read your post, I thought about what I do when I'm searching, which is I totally fucking ignore those paid placements 99.9% of the time. Cite ad blindness:

"The findings in this study suggest that users experience text advertising blindness. Users were less successful, reported more task difficulty, and took longer to find information when it was embedded in text advertisements positioned at the top and the right side of the page."

http://www.upassoc.org/upa_publicati...ay/owens1.html

Checkmate.

Don't believe everything you read just because it comes from a supposed "authority".

The ultimate authority in our capitalistic society is money, and Google generates tens of millions of dollars in pay-per-click revenue every day like clockwork.

If the text ads in search results were largely unsuccessful then this wouldn't be possible. Think about it logically for a second...

Originally Posted by singingsleep

That was a good fucking point he made OP. When I read your post, I thought about what I do when I'm searching, which is I totally fucking ignore those paid placements 99.9% of the time. Cite ad blindness:

"The findings in this study suggest that users experience text advertising blindness. Users were less successful, reported more task difficulty, and took longer to find information when it was embedded in text advertisements positioned at the top and the right side of the page."

http://www.upassoc.org/upa_publicati...ay/owens1.html

Checkmate.

The only correct answer to the OP's question has to do with cold hard math, as explained by hochelaga and imperial109.

Originally Posted by stunna

Don't believe everything you read just because it comes from a supposed "authority".

The ultimate authority in our capitalistic society is money, and Google generates tens of millions of dollars in pay-per-click revenue every day like clockwork.

If the text ads in search results were largely unsuccessful then this wouldn't be possible. Think about it logically for a second...

Alright, if I had to reply to that because the client said that back, I'd say:

SEO companies generate a hell of a lot too. Why not cover all your bases?

Originally Posted by singingsleep

That was a good fucking point he made OP. When I read your post, I thought about what I do when I'm searching, which is I totally fucking ignore those paid placements 99.9% of the time. Cite ad blindness:

"The findings in this study suggest that users experience text advertising blindness. Users were less successful, reported more task difficulty, and took longer to find information when it was embedded in text advertisements positioned at the top and the right side of the page."

http://www.upassoc.org/upa_publicati...ay/owens1.html

Checkmate.

Thats is very convincing point he made. Mostly the people are not interested to even read the ads around.

With AdWords, you have to pay always.
With SEO, you most of the time pay once.

Rest is math.

I'll admit I don't know shit about offline marketing but I'm trying to learn. What I do know a lot about is shopping, so I try to think about shit from a real customer point of view. That's honestly what popped in my head... I don't give paid ads as much clout in my head than ones that made it to the organic top results and I know that ad blindness is a real phenomenon. Hell, I may be wrong, but OP stated a real good point, that's the best I could think of to come back with, and I would have, on the spot.

Originally Posted by abookyent

hello all.

I have a keyword ranked #1 on google. I contact a few clients and 1 client asked me . Why would i pay 397$ /month for your website when I can pay 10 bucks per click on google adwords? Whats the big prize of seo when theres Pay per click marketing and im guaranteed to stay at number 1.

I don't remember the exact percentage- but I do remember that over 60% of people clicking on paid search ads are the lesser educated type. So if your client is in the high end arena you can use this to your advantage. Also, 10-15% of paid search clicks are fraudulent. So if you paying for 50 clicks a month at x dollars- aprox 10-15 will be from people messing with you. Purely wasted money.

Spyfu has some really good programs to show the difference between free and paid search.

I have used the "social proof" argument. The typical web user believes that sites earn their way to the top of organic listings. They also know that paid ads are, well, paid. If the group of the top 3 or 4 search results are highly relevant, the user may click on the result long before perceiving the secondary blocks. Only if the top 3 or 4 organic results are not highly relevant does the user look at the ads or "before the fold"

Ironically, when I helped a marketer test some of this (working with a large organic food wholesaler - I programmed all the tests), we found an interesting reverse situation. One testee called it "Ask-kissing." Thats when there were no relevant ads and the stupid Ask/Ebay/Amazon default keyword ads were the only ads that appeared. You know - you do a search for "coins" and you get the default Ask and Ebay ad link. When one of these appeared in the visible ads - users ignored the whole ad block.

So on-topic - users trust the top 3-4 organics and click through much more often. More clicks per impressions.

Originally Posted by orlandolongwood

I have used the "social proof" argument. The typical web user believes that sites earn their way to the top of organic listings. They also know that paid ads are, well, paid. If the group of the top 3 or 4 search results are highly relevant, the user may click on the result long before perceiving the secondary blocks. Only if the top 3 or 4 organic results are not highly relevant does the user look at the ads or "before the fold"

Ironically, when I helped a marketer test some of this (working with a large organic food wholesaler - I programmed all the tests), we found an interesting reverse situation. One testee called it "Ask-kissing." Thats when there were no relevant ads and the stupid Ask/Ebay/Amazon default keyword ads were the only ads that appeared. You know - you do a search for "coins" and you get the default Ask and Ebay ad link. When one of these appeared in the visible ads - users ignored the whole ad block.

So on-topic - users trust the top 3-4 organics and click through much more often. More clicks per impressions.

^ This is basically THE winning argument.

Adwords is a great system for gaining some targeted traffic, but you also have to think that each $10 click may not be fulfilling the intended purpose.

For instance, someone looks up "how to train your pet" and out of haste, clicks the first result they see which lead them to a page about "how to train your pet dragon". (its a movie, just an example) Well after about two seconds of realization, they are now hitting the back button, and guess who's adwords account is still getting charged.

If Adwords was the be all/end all for online marketing.. SEO, and more importantly BHW wouldn't even exist.

Some interesting theories put forth in this thread.

It's quite clear that many of you haven't even spent more than $500 in a PPC account.

Originally Posted by stunna

Some interesting theories put forth in this thread.

It's quite clear that many of you haven't even spent more than $500 in a PPC account.

Oh .. seriously?

I have spent, and eventually I stopped after I started ranking naturally on the keywords. Why should I continue to spend 2€ on clicks now?

Regarding to higher the visibility, PPC helps of course if you want a second position in the SERPs.

Now, tell us why PPC is better in the long run?

Originally Posted by stunna

Some interesting theories put forth in this thread.

It's quite clear that many of you haven't even spent more than $500 in a PPC account.

To me it sounds like you're saying if you're willing to invest more in PPC advertising that you will get better returns than a top ranking organic search result.

Please do explain, I'm sure the many of us who haven't even spent $500 on PPC could use some learning about how someone of such PPC status does things.

The only answer is to do a split test where you test your conversion % when you only rank organically vs. when you only have paid ads.

Sometimes having paid and organic creates something ppc experts call the "halo effect" in which having both improves clicks and conversions of both.

Other times there is a "cannibalization" effect.

The only way to really know is to test.

A number 1 ranking in local? It better be above the Google 7 pack or its worthless. Even then Google can change the algo.

For 400 a month I could rank a client in the a spot and get 10 times the clicks you do.

I have dozens of #1 rankings for local kw's. They get about 1/10th of the traffic of a "a" spot on a local search. So in this situation if the client has google reviews and a places page, his adswords express ad would blow away your results at the bottom of the 1st page organically.

Not even close

Originally Posted by graddis

A number 1 ranking in local? It better be above the Google 7 pack or its worthless. Even then Google can change the algo.

For 400 a month I could rank a client in the a spot and get 10 times the clicks you do.

I have dozens of #1 rankings for local kw's. They get about 1/10th of the traffic of a "a" spot on a local search. So in this situation if the client has google reviews and a places page, his adswords express ad would blow away your results at the bottom of the 1st page organically.

Not even close

What's your stance on Google's change to the 7-pack? Now I'm only seeing 3 or 4 packs.

Don't forget he may get a higher conversion rate from adwords clicks than from your site.

Like the guys have said, this is simple math and he may be right -- why not just get some figures to plug in and work it out.

I can't remember where I read it, but I remember reading somewhere that people tend to trust the organic search results over the paid ads on the side, so they are more likely to use the search results over the paid ads. So I would tell him that.

It ALL comes down to math. at $400/month, how many searches are there AND is the keyword a buying keyword or a shopping keyword. IE: dog training might be a informational keyword, but dog training programs might be a buying keyword. I wouldn't use PPC on keywords that aren't clearly "buying" keywords using something like market samurai or spyfu.

Originally Posted by graddis

A number 1 ranking in local? It better be above the Google 7 pack or its worthless. Even then Google can change the algo.

For 400 a month I could rank a client in the a spot and get 10 times the clicks you do.

I have dozens of #1 rankings for local kw's. They get about 1/10th of the traffic of a "a" spot on a local search. So in this situation if the client has google reviews and a places page, his adswords express ad would blow away your results at the bottom of the 1st page organically.

Not even close

u want a cookie with that?