I joined a UK online retailer 3 months ago and proceeded to optimisation and expand on their Google Adwords account. I thought I was doing well as my Adwords reports showed that revenue and ROI were increasing. Recently, the directors have asked me to cut back on the PPCs because they believe that running too many PPCs on keywords, which we have a first page organic position is merely taking visits we would have got for free. I have used Google Analytics and have found that this is not true in all cases, however, I am not too sure if my directors are going to agree with my findings because they are only looking at top line sales. The Google Analytics results showed that PPC traffic and revenue dropped by 50%, Organic traffic only marginally increased 3% (when in the past it increased by 6% naturally), whereas Direct traffic fell by 15%. I believe cannibalisation can only really happen if you have top PPC, top organic and there are no other PPC competitors because search is so massive there is always enough to go round. I believe the key is ROI. I was wondering what people thought of this PPC vs SEO and cannibalisation argument and whether anyone has any recommendations on a suitable strategy for running PPCs and SEO campaigns in total harmony?
Well, I don't run PPC because SEO is cheap and long-lasting. Plus, I hate bidding on keywords when I can invest in anchored links. That said, there are several arguments for maintaining a top position in both columns, here are a few that come to mind: Different types of users click organic or sponsored links. The Sponsored links are rarely clicked by experienced users, but to those new to the internet, those links may have a certain legitimacy. Another advantage is being able to use an ad which is different from the site description tag. For SEO purposes, you obviously don't want to turn your description in to a pitch, but your PPC campaign can do this and change on a daily basis. By holding those spots on the sponsored links, you are depriving the competition of one highly visible position. Your organic result may take clicks from the PPC (good for you), but I doubt it will work the other way very often. If it does, this simply proves the advantage of holding both places, since the sponsored link is for whatever reason more appealing. That's what comes to mind. Get your figures together, they will back you up.
The majority of internet users do not even know that there are paid spots on the search results page. Go ask your parents to point out the paid search listings, they'll have no idea what you're talking about, (unless they're a marketer themselves). That means that you cannot cannibalise anything. Pull up the search results on google and ask one of the older directors to point out the paid listings on the page. (Hopefully they can't). Then say, that's ok because the majority don't know the difference, which is WHY you should not drop your ppc listings in favor of the "free" ones. I've done this experiment with several people when they ask how I make my living and most had no idea you could buy ads on google or yahoo or msn...