SEO VS Pay Per Click

Created on Wednesday, 09 May 2012 14:21

So many of our clients are unclear as what the difference is between SEO and Pay Per Click. It’s sort of like the difference between an apartment and a condo. One you rent, one you own. Both are effective at keeping you out of the rain, but which is better for getting qualified visitors to your website?

To clarify for the rest of this article, we reference Google as the main search engine, and AdWords as the version of Pay Per Click that we employ most.

Google = Search Engine

Adwords = Pay Per Click

You ask; what do you mean - one you rent and the other you own? Well, technically, this is not totally accurate, but stay with me. I’ll walk you through this quickly. Google makes literally BILLIONS every year on AdWords. Ad budget fees are paid to Google per click, and to your Internet Marketing Firm for ad account creation/management. So Pay Per Click is more or less renting space on Google. You can browse with an agent and find what placement you want, and they will give you a estimated value to reach the desired page placement. You then go rent that space for your ad. Breaking away from the analogy for a second; your budget, and how it’s managed, will determine the frequency of how often your ad will be displayed for the desired key phrases.

On the flip side, SEO is like owning. Actually, SEO is like a major renovation to your home. Your home in this case, is your website. The idea is that the more investment a company makes into its’ SEO campaign, the higher it will place for targeted key phrases, and the longer it will stick in the higher ranking pages. So there is, of course, ongoing maintenance on the home. Sometimes it’s a garbage disposal that needs replacement, sometimes it’s the roof. In this illustration though, you are the homeowner. The benefits are recurring exposure and qualified traffic, the drawbacks are that this is an ongoing process of maintaining your property. This of course eats away at your overall budget - so how do decide how much should be spent out on search engine optimization? - Metrics.

As with any AdWords campaign you run, you can see the results - THIS SHOULD BE TRUE OF YOUR SEO AS WELL! You can tally how many leads were generated from a campaign. How many phone calls, how many forms were completed, how many whirlybirds were bought at checkout. Also, importantly, is; how many people left early - or worse, during checkout? Metrics, being able to evaluate web traffic behavior, is the major benefit to inbound marketing in general. If you don’t care about measuring results, just buy yourself some passive, outbound media, like a TV commercial!

You want to know the cost associated with these types of internet marketing. Unfortunately, without knowing what your goals are, we cannot define SEO or AdWords cost. It’s impossible. What I can tell you is that SEO is will generally run you about half of a pay per click campaign. I don’t mean to discourage you from using it. If used properly, both can show great results. If you are in the market for an SEO or AdWords campaign, I would suggest that you identify your target audience as best you can. Also, do some research on who your competitors are online. They might be different from those you know in your area. Collecting this data will help you and the firm you hire to compete in the rankings.

Twitter to Launch Photo Sharing

Created on Thursday, 02 June 2011 16:48

Twitter announced this week they’ll be adding a photo-sharing service through the image hosting site, Photobucket. Photobucket has been around since 2003, boasting over 23 million users. Since Twitter is now being used by 13% of all Internet users, this merge will be huge for both companies involved. Photobucket’s large user list combined with Twitter’s steady increase of new users will continue to make Twitter one of the most important social media sites around.

Photobucket’s CEO Tom Munro said, "Photobucket is excited to be chosen to power this extension of Twitter."  We are confident that together we can seamlessly provide a simple, intuitive photo sharing experience for Twitter users"  Some thought popular image sharing sites like Twitpic and Yfrog  would have made the merge since both companies specifically targeted twitter users. But now, they will be in direct competition with them both. Twitter wanted it’s own service to make the process easier for non-techy people when uploading and sharing photos. Photobucket's servers will be used to store images sent in by tweeters, although the actual service itself appears to be managed directly by Twitter. The company expects the feature to go live in the next several weeks.

Spokesmen for Twitter have stated this is not competition with Facebook  Facebook hosts the largest number of images with an estimated 600 million users worldwide. Twitter will now be elevating itself to a more important position by adding this new function. Potential users may have been turned off by the 140 character post limit. Now, with the ability to share images, this may bring in more people who prefer a personalized social media experience.