Integrate Organic and PPC Strategies

PPC and organic joining hands Google’s Basic Company Mission: Provide most relevant content delivered on SERPS, includes PPC and Organic Results.

Changes to Performance Based Advertising at Google.

Did anybody notice the economic platform at Google has been rapidly evolving? “The winds of change” are here today, right here, right now. This applies to both PPC and organic results that are served when someone enters a phrase into the all mighty Google Search.

Advertisers have to be kept happy and Google knows that. It looks like Google is has moved the 2 worlds together. . . natural and PPC. They are moving forward in small but certain steps. Part of success from this program used to be derived from the longer a company spends bidding on a particular phrase, the lower the cost per acquisition. An example of this is if we had a company that was bidding on a term such as “home security” for the last few years thier cpc (cost per click) may be $4. If a new company entered the marketplace and wanted the same term for the same ad position they may have to pay $6-7 for the same click. Presumably, the reason for this is fundamental business or a loyalty bonus.

With the many of the recent Google updates that have occurred in starting June/July 2008 and onward, loyalties seem to not longer have as much merit with Google. Do the years of keyword investment with Google mean nothing anymore? It seems like a more level ground for all players. That seems fair enough but what about organic rankings?

Organic Ranking- How Old is Your Domain?

Natural ranking has historically had allot to do with seniority (time online). The next time you are online searching Google, take note of the top ranked websites, go to waybackmachine.com and see how long they have been online for. You will start to see a common pattern…they have all been online for years many years. This has been common in both worlds of search, paid and organic. Of course there are many other ranking factors but “age” of domain appears to carry much weight indeed! If you asked me what was the number one ranking factor today, my answer would be different than 1 year ago. I will guarantee you, if you have not discovered what the number one raking factor is in 2009; the answer would shock you! The answer to ranking in 2009 is hidden on this page.

A Closer Look at Search Engine Ranking & Age of Domain

Here I will take the phrase “real estate” and query Google in Canada

IMG organic top 5.jpg

  1. Found http://www.realtor.com/- Online since Oct 09, 1997
  2. Found http://www.realestate.com.au- Online since Dec 19, 1996
  3. Found for http://realestate.yahoo.com/- Online since Jan 25, 1999
  4. Found http://www.realestate.com/- Online since Jan 02, 1997
  5. Found  http://www.domain.com.au/- Online since Nov 27, 1999

So you can see that the top 5 ranked websites are at least 11 years old. Is this coincidence? I could not help wondering the answer to this so I tried several other highly competitive phrases and found the same results occurring.

In natural rankings age appears to be very important to top rankings.

Age of Domain and PPC

A growing number of PPC (AdWords) professionals have come to the conclusion that seniority matters. Loyalties and time spent bidding on specific keywords appeared to matter. Particularly working in Google’s MCC 9master client center) where PPC professionals have an opportunity to see the same campaigns perform differently for various clients. The only difference was “length of time” bidding on the same keywords. There has always been a difference in CPC bidding for position, the more senior the client, the lower the CPC for the same ad position. This is what appears to have been a biggest change in AdWords since 2008. The lesson here is we need to have well rounded websites that appeal to both PPC and organic traffic sources.

What I mean is there are multi billion dollar fortune 500 companies that depend on PPC alone and have put no efforts into organic rankings. That is the biggest change in the world of PPC. It appears as though your money and your loyalty can no longer hold your ad positions at a preferred rate. An all encompassing marketing strategy is needed. Then your strategy needs to be measured and tweaked constantly.

Is Pay Per Click Advertising Enough?

Big budget companies that have come to rely heavily on PPC are now seeing a reduction in ROI. Their business models have started to become less-profitable from Pay-per-click alone. If you are becoming solely dependant on PPC traffic it is a costly mistake. Fortune 500 companies that spend $100-500k per month in PPC seem to have seen the greatest ROI reductions. Added to that, very little effort in the past has been put forth on building organic traffic streams to their website. Many longterm AdWords advertisers have had their golden road paved in the same asphalt everyone else drives on. Other channels of traffic must be developed.

NEW PPC Questions to Ask Yourself

  • Do we need to get incoming links to isolated landing pages?
  • Does length of bidding time effect a particular key phrase’s CPA?
  • Does Google classify PPC clients in level of importance (volume)?

PPC, Organic And Social Traffic Sources

I am not sure if anyone is really noticing the fact that Google is making majors efforts in social networks. It is now more important than ever to be using Google’s connect the dot suite of tools to be profitable. A strong comprehension of the relationship between PPC, social marketing, and natural ranking is critical. There are few online businesses that are really taking advantage of this. PPC and organic result pages are becoming a more co-ordinated train of thought over at Googleplex. Here’s a social marketing lesson from the Google Developers themselves.

Does Using Other Google Webmaster Tools Help?

There is a school of thought that is using Google’s suite of tools. Programs such as Google Analytics, website optimizer, campaign optimizer, and AdWords can be used in harmony to improve your AdWords spending BIG TIME. That’s what Google has made em for and that’s what we should use em for!

Does Google take note when you are using these other programs? Let’s think for a second, when we employ these free programs, we improve our bottom line AND Google keeps the data. Seems like a good deal? Imagine (for a moment) the power of that conversion and analytic data that Google has in a data base! They can tell you what you are thinking before you think it :-) . We must keep in mind Google is running a business just like the rest of us. They have a business model just like most successful businesses.

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