Re: SEO versus PPC - the unending debate

From: David Yancey <dyancey_at_proactics.com>
Date: Fri 18 Mar 2005 09:09:50 -0600

Cliff is correct when he says that one needs a balanced program between
search-based PPC (as in Yahoo/Overture and others), context-based PPC
(as with Google AdWords and AdSense, and others) and SEO.
He is also right that a serious investment in quantitative homework is
typically needed to determine what the balance ought to be in terms of
likely real ROI for each lead generating channel.

Cliff is also spot on IMO in recommending that improving site basics is
probably the best value-for-money investment most commercial sites can
make. The problem of course is that no one really knows how to quantify
the benefits of site improvements clearly, so this alternative often
gets short shrift.

Realize, however, that a really competent SEO expert will always make
suggestions for improving navigation and readability etc on every page
that is apt to be seen by the web crawler bots. Making a site work
better for humans almost always makes it easier for the search engines
to spider, so this is a natural process. *If your SEO consultant has
nothing to say about navigation and similar site improvements, then
you_ll want to find out why before spending a great deal of money.*

Further, don_t fail to add to the mix in Cliff_s balancing suggestion
all the other programs for lead generation the company or professional
practice is funding. Smaller local businesses, for example, may discover
with rigorous analysis that they are rapidly reaching the point where
the tradeoff between Yellow Page ads and paid search (in all its forms,
including online Yellow Pages and look alike directories) is tipping in
the favor of online channels.

As to SEO itself, a dose of realism is in order.

We always need to be aware that the top ten ranked search results (in
the _natural_ or _organic_ section of the page) siphon off about 90% or
so of the search users. Perhaps another 5% click out using a paid link.

Consider: for any fairly widely used keyword, in any significantly-used
search engine, if, say, 10,000 businesses are trying to achieve
visibility in the SE rankings -- for that specific keyword or phrase --
then, it is clear that only ten, or 1/10th of one percent, can expect to
appear in the top ten results. Sorry for that sentence, but we need the
discipline of numbers to find the best direction in online promotion.

The proportion between paid and unpaid clicks is not critical here. What
*is* vital is to understand that 10,000 commercial sites are fighting to
be visible to prospective customers, then the top ten are going to get
almost all the clicks, and the other 9,990 of those sites are going to
usually be ignored.

Wow! With such a disproportionate click-through rate between the few
winners and the also-ranked, it_s no wonder there is so much activity
online dedicated to subverting the alleged _relevance_ of Google_s,
Yahoo_s, MSN_s and other web crawlers_ results. (See this latest story
for a good overview of some of the darker aspects of SEO:
http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,66893,00.html)

With all the pressure to be in that magic top ten, and all the sales
pitches by the consultants who claim to be able to rank a site up there,
most site operators seem to be missing a very basic idea, namely, that
as the SEs become more and more dominant in consumer product and
shopping search, *very few companies will benefit from SEO*.

Huh? No payoff from SEO? Yes, basically, and it is a matter of math, not
this search site designer_s opinion, or any special preference for PPC
vs _natural_ or _organic_ search results.

It is simply a case of way too many folks seeking to be at the top of
the list. Obviously, the better SEOed sites will stand a better chance
of being among those top ten. But out of ten thousand, you can bet that
many hundreds will be following _best practice_ SEO tactics, only to be
found, after the expenditure of many thousands of dollars on
consultants, on page three or ten or whatever. The numbers tell the
story: as more and more companies learn the ropes of basic SE marketing,
the investment in top-quality SEO will rapidly reach a point of
diminishing returns for all but a very tiny number of
super-sophisticated sites managed by the real superstar SEOs.

And, let_s remind ourselves, the desperate commercial site owner is not
only contending with the other ten thousand such sites in our example,
but the hundreds of thousands more pages that the search engine_s
indexing algorithm happens to see as being relevant to the search term.

In a few short years, _search_ has evolved to a point where the normal,
non-web savvy user is being herded to the very tip top of an immense
pyramid for any given topic or key phrase, and, in effect, is
discouraged by the default page format from searching any further down
for a relevant result.

When the web was not so commercial, this was not a serious problem. But
with the maturing of web-based marketing, and now, the budget-busting
escalation of per-click costs, the premium on _beating the search engine
algorithms_ in the natural search results pages is huge. In effect, it
means that *all* the search results likely to be seen by the _normal_
search user are _commercial_, *whether via a PPC or context advertising
program, or thanks to richly-funded SEO efforts*.

I am not saying this is _bad_. Heck, paid-search and SEM is funding the
web_s extraordinary progress as an alternative to the old, print-based,
less targeted, less user-friendly ways of finding businesses and products.

I am simply pointing out that _search_ has been co-opted, and suggesting
that many, many thousands of advertisers are unaware of the rapid
devaluation in search results.

But the consumer is not so ignorant. At every gathering I attend the
non-webbies all dump on me their frustration at wasting so much time
looking for stuff online. These everyday users may not know about
_affiliate spam_ in the search engines, or how high-priced keywords
effectively prevent most businesses from using SEM (a topic for another
day.) But these people *do* know that most of the search results they
see for the popular keywords lead to sales pages, and not to
_informational_ pages - - and the ones we listen to don_t like it.

So the great irony is that millions of highly desirable consumers don_t
even use search engines, and most SEM/SEO folks don_t mention this - -
for obvious reasons. _Experts_ and web-sophisticates tend to pooh-pooh
the non-search users as Luddites or technophobes, but we think a very
large proportion of these millions of prospects are simply fed up with a
seemingly infinite list of purportedly _relevant_ results which turn out
to be a few dozen well-SEOed commercial sites at the top followed by a
mass of largely useless other results.

These folks are learning to turn to other kinds of directories, how-to,
and buyer_s guidance sites.

The conclusion? By all means, optimize your site, especially for
niche-type key phrases that the big players don_t care about. And use
PPC, with great judiciousness. But no truly balanced program to generate
leads can afford to ignore the many other venues where serious buyers
tend to congregate.

David Yancey
http://www.vivante.com




Received on Fri Mar 18 2005 - 09:09:50 CST