AdWords vs. SEO: best bang for the buck?

I'm currently spending a fair amount on AdWords every month, and I have been playing with the idea of stopping all ads for a couple of months and spending it on SEO services. In the short run this will put a dent in my bottom line, but I'm thinking that the long term payoff for SEO will be better.

Am I crazy or has anyone else been down this path?

 

Adwords can bring you fast traffic to your site and it will be stopped once you stop paying them.

SEO is slow process and brings you high PR that can bring you traffic in the future and it will be a non stop process !

 

SEO definitely pays off in the long run. AdWords may be a good way to sustain your site while you implement your SEO strategy.

 

The problem with trying to do both simultaneously is that my budget is only so big. I've ever seriously shopped for SEO services, but I assume that decent services aren't cheap.

 

You seem to be a small time publisher like myself. It took me about a year to realize that adwords was eating out of my budget to much. By that realizing adwords didn't suit small time publishers. Using a smaller budget which i presume you are, you will definetely get more out of seo services.

Once the seo services leads you to being a bigger publisher and you can't grow with just using that. Then switch to adwords. Like me adwords was expensive for a small time publisher and didn't yield the right results. I hope you get great results with the seo services, im sure you will.

 

Seo is more important. Adwords is optional.

 

Hmm here's my 2 cents (and I help companies do this for a livining).

PPC campaigns enable you to get instant business, and you can go after an almost unlimited amount of keyword variations. You can also see right away which keywords are making you the most sales with tracking.

Obviously SEO should be a goal since your not paying per click. But for most companies you can't focus on more then 3 unique keyword phrases per page (for top placement). So if you have more keywords then you do pages PPC should be a constant. Though once your SEO is done and you are getting good positions for your main keywords I'm sure you could tailor down your PPC budget .

Try Yahoo too. Much cheaper and still effective. Can always visit my site and contact me if you need help setting them up. http://www.search-placement.com

 

there should be a balance between paid and organic advertising as these two has own plus and minus points. In the long run, SEO will help you out.

 

Is Mr G going to crack down Adwords -> Adsense users?

Anyone can give us more information?

 

Ad-Words is better for quick results or long-tail keywords that aren't worth targeting with SEO.

In the long-run SEO is almost certainly going to be cheaper and provide a better ROI.

I wouldn't suggest dropping all of your adwords spend as you'll be getting no income at all for the months that it's not running, I'd slowly divert a proportion increasing this monthly as your natural results start to show.

 

If you are getting a good ROI from adwords, I wouldn't suggest stopping it alltogether. You can try the best of both worlds - by starting on organic seo and gradually reducing your adwords budget as adwords provides you instant results where as organic seo takes time to show results but the ROI from SEO always beats out adwords ROI - therefore definitely include seo in your marketing mix.
if you get it right, in due time, the returns from seo work would start paying for your adwords too and you wouldn't have to stop it all and can continue to keep profiting from both

 

Getting SEO or organic traffic is really not that hard, and it really is not a slow process.. It build exponentially if you do it correctly.

Granted it does not bring burst and immediate traffic like adwords but the cost of adwords for that traffic is amazing if you think about it.

for long term SEO is the way to go, because the longer your site sits the heavier your ranks will be on the SERPS.

 

I prefer SEO.
If it's something you can do by yourself, don't be lazy and just do it.

 

Actually, AdWords only accounts for a small percentage of my business. So dropping it shouldn't hut the bottom line that hard.

And I'm not being lazy about SEO. Oh, wait, yes I am.

Seriously, though, it's an issue of time constraints. Either I can spend my time developing software or building back links. My philosophy is to stick with your core competency and outsource the rest. SEO isn't hard, but it is time consuming (at least for me.)