Death of PPC?

[bob schmidt]

On the webinar today I asked if you had heard information concerning search results on Google. I received an email from Andy Jenkins with a Heat map in ti where it showed where people were clicking. The source of the Heat map is http://www.marketingsherpa.com. It showed that most of the activity was on the first 3 organic search results. Later in the email it showed a screen shot of Google search for car insurance. The top paid results got 2-3% while the 1st organic result got 41%-45% and the second organic result got 11%-18%. The screen shot came from Ryan Diess's 30 page PDF "The Perpetual Traffic Report". Given both Andy Jenkins and Ryan Dies are well known in the IM circles I take this information seriously. So I ask again is PPC dead?

[MikeF421]

I think the problem with PPC is that people have become conditioned to ignore it. There have been so many links to crappy sales pages for years now. I think poeple just don't even bother looking at AdWords Ads.

Also, and I know I'm going to get this statistic wrong, but their was a poll done maybe a year or two ago that found something like 75% of people believe that a listing in the first 3 spots of SERP's are an industry leader.

Basically, if that poll was accurate people feel that the top of the SERP's is giving them the best result for what they are looking for.

[bob schmidt]

Whatever the polls show, it is still the case that PPC costs still rise because whether or not people click on them the perception is that you get faster results. That may be the case but I have always believed that PPC was not a good value and the information I have seen lately bears that out. If you spent the same money on unique articles and distributed them, made videos and used those for promotion you would do much better, I believe. If it takes me a little longer for people to find my site, if my page rank grows slowly well so be it. IM is not a sprint it's a marathon. I would rather be #10 search result on page 1 than spend the money for PPC. There is always going to be someone with more money to out bid you and once the budget is gone so does the position. On the other hand using articles and videos, they don't go away and can bring in visitors for years.

[Engage]

There are over a million Adsense publishers. Somebody must be clicking on the ads.

[bob schmidt]

Dear Engage,
I agree Adsense is a very good way to monetize a site. I know a lot of people have made several thousands of dollars with Adsense. I was remarking on PPC or Ad W.O.R.D.S. Completely different animal and I only wanted point to out that the ROI from Adwords, I believe, is not as good as other ways to promote a site. Sorry, I didn't mean to ruffle so many feathers.

[Engage]

Adwords, I believe, is not as good as other ways to promote a site. Sorry, I didn't mean to ruffle so many feathers.

I agree Bob, no feathers ruffled.

[MikeF421]

Really, there is absolutely nothing wrong with AdWords.

It's a matter of understanding your web traffic.

If I know that a single web visitor is worth $0.10 to me (for example: 1 in 10 visitors buys, each sale earns me $1.00.) and I can bid on a keyword at $0.05 that brings visitors, I would be a moron not to run an AdWords campaign. Even though it would cost me $0.05 a click, I would make $0.10 from each visitor, so I would make a profit of $0.05.

If you can find that scenario, why wouldn't you use both organic traffic and AdWords?