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There is a lot of debate over whether or not to continue using Pay Per Click advertising after your site begins to rank organically for your top performing keywords. Over time, store owners would ideally like to cut expenses by increasing free traffic streams to their site through SEO & Social Media efforts. However, deciding to pull the plug completely on your Sponsored Search initiatives, could have some very serious consequences on your overall performance.
The freedom of the Internet allows your competitors to bid on on literally any keyword under the sun. Because of this, the marketplace is fierce. Although you may have the top organic listing, that doesn’t mean that some “fly-by-night” company can’t spring up and pay a lower price to display ads in the spot that you once occupied (or worse, display an ad above your organic listing).
Also, the intelligence of the buying public is growing each and every day, and they actually tend to utilize the “Sponsored Links” section when they are at the final stage of the buying cycle, since they know that this space is a favorite hangout for ecommerce sites. Although free traffic may sound appealing, there is a certain level of reputability and brand reinforcement that is achieved by taking advantage of this double exposure, as well as an increased likelihood of converting.
Maintaining your PPC campaigns, also allows you to protect the integrity of your brand. As I mentioned earlier, the competition can bid on any keyword that they’re willing to pay money for – including your company name. If you aren’t at the very top of the page for your own site, it is likely that a percentage of searchers will never reach your store (despite their previous intent to). This tactic has also been proven to increase overall click-through-rates, as it further justifies the legitimacy of the user generated query.
Consistency is also a benefit of running PPC ads despite an uptick in organic traffic. Unlike paid search, your rank on the search engines can fluctuate greatly over a relatively short period of time. Between search algorithms, changing content, and competing SEO efforts – assuming that you will hold the top spot forever, simply isn’t feasible. Unlike sponsored links, you cannot go to the top of the search results with a simple bid increase. By doubling up on your efforts, you are not only protecting your stake in the online marketplace, but ensuring visibility when your organic efforts begin to slack.
Increased control, is also an additional benefit that PPC has over SEO. Pay Per Click campaigns allow you to execute time-sensitive promotions, customize ad content, and immediately respond to current trends in the marketplace, while organic listings wait be crawled and updated by the search engines. The control of paid search, also allows you the ability to respond to negative press, or give specific landing pages additional exposure based on demand. This control allows for a more proactive approach to your online marketing initiatives.
When it’s all said and done though, there will still be people that argue that it is pointless to “waste” money on sponsored links when you already have first page listings for your top keywords (including trademarks). However, I would never go so far as to call it a “waste.” Whenever I’m not sure about the best approach, I look at what the competition is doing, and the bigger the competitor – the better. Search for Amazon, Best Buy, Gap, Old Navy, TigerDirect, Walmart, or anybody else who can afford an in-house marketing department, and you will see that they have sponsored listings for their own brands.
If however you decide to stop advertising once you reach the top spot on Google, I recommend doing so with caution. Try ramping back on your spend in the beginning to see how it affects your traffic levels & sales volume. If the value of the reduced cost is greater than the decreased performance, try lowering your bids again and remember to track the changes to your bottom line. Every account is different, however you don’t want to limit the exposure of your business with the simple goal of saving money.
Google’s gone and done it again. If their new user-friendly interface wasn’t enough to get you excited for AdWords, their new column options might.
Now you have the ability to enable conversion value and average order value to display on the campaign, adgroup and keyword levels with a simple click. This data was previously only available in the reporting tab, but now these figures can be used to make precise bid changes on the fly. Gone are the days of opening up multiple tabs or referencing printed reports to increase the efficiency of your campaigns.
These new column options are much like those found within Yahoo’s interface, which unfortunately will be phased out completely in the upcoming months as a part of the new ”Search Alliance” with Bing. Although Google has yet to incorporate ROAS figures within their working interface, it should only be a matter of time before it becomes available.
With the partnership of Yahoo & Microsoft and the shift to the adCenter interface, it’s great to see AdWords raising the bar to continue increasing usability and insight. Paired with sorting capabilities, users can easily identify their top-earning keywords and make more informed decisions based on information that trumps conventional CPA figures alone.
Quality Score is defined by Ad Synergies as, “An algorithm used in the Pay Per Click advertising platforms for ranking the relevancy of landing pages to their corresponding PPC advertisements and keywords. Higher quality scores indicate a stronger correlation – thus giving the customer what they are searching for. This increased “quality” or relevance is often rewarded by the PPC platforms with lower keyword costs and improved ad placement position.”
In a nutshell, you should be able to achieve a higher position at a lower cost-per-click based how relevant your keywords are to your ad copy and landing page. Although it may seem pretty straightforward, every search engine is different, and the metrics used to calculate this score are far from transparent.
Advertising on search engines is based on an open market system, so it is very possible that a less relevant site, bidding on the very same keywords, may rank higher simply because they are willing to pay more for a click to their site. Search engines are no different than your business, they are out to make money. Quality score is a way to justify higher costs with vague descriptions and secret formulas that are used to calculate relevance.
Pay Per Click companies claiming to “manipulate” the quality score – unfortunately, are bound by the same restrictions as everybody else. Nobody wants to pay for a poor placement, however in this case “money talks.” The more general your keywords are, the higher price you are likely to pay.
The best way to bypass this common pitfall is to utilize long tail keyword variations. These are often overlooked by most advertisers, and may help to increase the relevance of the traffic that enters your site. Although these terms don’t yield as much traffic, they can certainly help advertisers obtain a fair amount of relevant exposure when operating within a limited budget.