I have the number 1 position for a hotly contested phrase that defines my industry. There are at least 20 people buying ppc, and I spend money on this too -- it is most of our budget. I am trying to decide how much value I get for two things: 1) Direct revenue -- am I merely cannibalizing clicks I would have gotten organically in the #1 position, or is there something additive? 2) Defensive posture -- my most threatening customers are at the bottom of the top 10 organic results. They are buying to appear at the top of the results (in sponsored, of course). Is there value in making them pay more? Perhaps the other ad buyers are forcing the market price up much more and I am wasting my money. The spend is about $8k per month, about $1.36 per click. Many, many thanks for comments.
You need to analyze the ROI of your Adwords campaign. Figure out how much traffic you get out of Adwords and how much of it converts. If you are paying more than receiving, or even comparable, it is not worth it. The key part here is to differentiate the traffic you receive from Adwords and the organic traffic and see which brings in the bulk of your revenue. Besides, if you already own the top position in your niche, I don't see any reason to bid on the same keywords for search results. However, you could try to get traffic from the content network (other sites that have Adsense on them). These clicks are a lot cheaper, but you will have to try them and see if they really convert. Good luck!
This is an interesting topic which I will make sure to keep an eye on. On one hand by using Adwords you have the opportunity to increase your websites hits and decrease your competitiors websites hits, however at a significant cost of over $1 a click and I would believe it would help your companies brand/image. Though you already have the best organic position which is most likely generating a lot of traffic. It will have a lot to do with the ROI and whether you have the money to spend on adwords. I'm interested to know what service/product your selling as I think this would also influence the decision.
I just hit this very sweet spot of confusion yesterday. I'm confused, should I keep my adwords on or take em off. (PS: Its the first time im in the #1 spot, and that just happened yesterday, my adwords campaign started just 4 days back, is there a correlation or just coincidence?
Depending on who's research yopu're looking at, having adwords as well as a top organic listing will increase traffic by 15 - 30%. The only way of knowing how it works for you, is try it and test. my adwords campaign started just 4 days back, is there a correlation or just coincidence? - it's coincidence.
It is an interesting subject. Few times i had to make a decision myself. There are two things you have to do (i hope you have Google Analytics installed) : 1. measure results a. compare PPC with organic when both in use (conversions and CTR included) b. measure results with no PPC it must be done in proper time frame so you will have good number of clicks to compare 2. decide the strategy after results are known but there are many additional questions: - do they bid to be on the top of the results or only on the side - how many of them (2-3 on the top and full side bar?) - what are you CTR on organic and PPC (and in both measured cases) - can you rewrite your description to bit them? What descriptions they have Sorry but as you see there is no simple answer to your question
If you're getting enough organic traffic and making sales it makes no sense to compete with your self. People want to get in the first position to get free traffic.If you're not making sales you should play with your landing page and adjust it Instead of spending on PPC it makes sense to invest the money and get another money word(high traffic-low to moderate competition) on the first page of Search Engines
You're not competing with yourself, you're competing with anyone else who has a link - organic or ppc - on the page. Your aim should always be to dominate the page - with an organic link to your site,a a ppc link to your site, a link to your FaceBook page , a link to your Twitter account, a link to your wiki entry, a squidoo page....etc etc etc - you don't want searchers to even see the competition...
Agreed with magda. Running ads when you have #1 is effectively a shelf-space decision. Conventional wisdom is that you run both. Regardless, you need to test it to be understand the lift (make sure you are tracking conversions, not just clicks).
The short answer is yes ... get listed and double your exposure on the first page. That doesn't necessarily mean you'll be any better off ROI wise, but that's where testing and tracking comes into play.
I think it's a good way to safeguard your position if your natural ranking suffers / if Google tweaks the algorithm and it goes against you.
You may have the top organic spot, but the bulk of people reading the page can't distinguish between paid and free listings. I run a test, bid high enough for that top spot for a week, then measure your results versus not having it. That's the only real way to know for sure. The good part is if you have the top organic spot, you'd think your actualy costs for that keyword would be far below anyone elses.
> The good part is if you have the top organic spot, you'd think your actualy costs for that keyword would be far below anyone elses. Doesn't work that way. Organic and sponsored are two separate things. One doesn't affect the other. Magda is right. You want more of the page's real estate so why stop PPC even if you have top spot? Not every one will click your organic listing and vice versa. If they don't click your organic, maybe something in your ad will attract attention. That click, even if you have to pay, is a potential customer, potential revenues, that you wouldn't get otherwise and taking away from a competitor.
Since you seem to be getting about 100 clicks a day, it's quite easy to stop Adwords for 1 day and see what happens. It should be a more or less reliable sample. In any case, I suppose you're not on page 1 for every keyword so I'd at least keep bidding on keywords for which I didn't score well.
Just run both ways and measure how much cannibalization of organic listings the adwords links create. then do the math for which is more profiable
If I would get a position of #1 i wouldnt opt out for PPC....coz i would get #1 position without paying ....
I've actually purchased PPC ads when being ranked first. This is for a couple of reasons. The first is that 14% of page browsers will click on an add via the first page of Google. Secondly, even though you are ranked first, PPC top bids may appear on top of the page making your organic listing either 3 or 4th on the page. If you're selling a product, you want all the quality traffic you can get so blend SEO and PPC for maximum results.
I agree with Magda, you want to dominate the page, to the extent that you have the money to it. A combination of #1 organic, #1 PPC and being in product results or news results, or image results is ideal.
Hello are you in position #1 in all google domain? the benefit from adwords that you can target different country and also what about if your site related to content campaign it cheaper in cpc
You should just pause the campaign so you can restart it with the same Quality score if your ranking drops.