So you have a website, it looks pretty and you probably paid someone plenty of hard earned money to build it for you? The chances are you are not getting much return from that investment because you or the people who built it for you have not carried out any appropriate Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) work on the site and you are just not getting enough traffic to your website.
The chances are you are not getting much return from that investment because you or the people who built it for you have not carried out any appropriate Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) work on the site and you are just not getting enough traffic to your website
One of the ways that people get around this is by spending on google adwords. Google adwords can be a great provider of visitors for many reasons. Its quick, it brings traffic and its easy to set up and control. Punters like it because they can cap spending and manage it themselves without paying anyone and you do get a sense of control. All of that said most people don’t really know how adwords works and end up spending much of their budget on terms that bring no conversions and the return on investment is often little more than they spent on advertising.
Google adwords is fantastic when managed correctly in a structured way, that much is certain but it terms of visitor numbers and ability to convert sales it will never beat the top positions within the natural search engine listings. The #1 google position will on average get 12 times more traffic than the #1 adwords listing position on google.
So ask your self this question, where would I prefer my website to be seen? Obviously it is top of the google organic listings, there is no substitute for a number one google ranking.
The reason I draw a comparison between adwords and natural listings is because we can make the comparison a financial one to see whether its worth paying someone for SEO work.
Every body has a different traceable goal on their site whether it be to sell a product or to get a form filled in or an email sign up. For the purposes of this article we will use a product for sale on a website. In this instance I am going to use the term ‘silk scarves for women’ and at the time of writing the info is accurate.
Google Adwords Example Costs
On average the term ‘silk scarves for women’ gets 1300 monthly searches in the UK and at the time of writing to be number one on adwords for that term would cost £2.30. It would be expected that the click through rate (CTR) for this would be around 3% for a well written advert. Therefore in one year, using adwords you would receive approximately 468 visits at a cost of £1076.
Organic Google Listing Value
For the same term to be #1 on google’s natural listing you would get a CTR of approximately 32% providing approximately 4990 visits/year. In stark contrast to get this many visits on adwords it would cost over £11,000. Even the number 3 slot in the natural listings would provide around 1000 visits a year worth £2300.
Summary
It is pretty clear using statistical data that being well placed on google organically is far better for a business than being in the google adwords list. SEO is not however without its drawbacks. It does take time, it takes considerable knowledge and concerted effort.
Of course it usually requires an investment and in the case of the selected term on a mid ranking website it would probably require an investment of about £100/month to make an assault on the top 3 positions over 12 months (assuming the website has some latent credibility).
Lastly then, ask yourself the following. Am I getting enough sales from my website, am I getting enough visitors, am I selling enough product. If the answer to these questions is no then I suggest you get in touch for a free no obligation chat about where your website optimisation can go next.
All the best
Rob
