I’m not one to bash PPC or to say SEO is the only way to go (you need both!), BUT I think this infographic says a lot about where we should be focusing our time & efforts in regards to getting the highest ROI from search engines.

Take a look below to see the behavior of online searchers.

I think the most important thing to gather from this is that there are multiple pieces in the ‘search engine’ pie.  If you want it all, then you need to diversify between SEO and PPC.  And based on the results listed in the infographic, SEO needs to be the bigger piece in your search engine pie!

What does your ‘search engine’ pie look like?  Do you have it sliced up right?  Comment Below and Let me know!

I ran across this just the other day and had to make mention of it.

Why would you choose SEO over PPC? A recent case study done by a professional SEO company reveals some very convincing answers.

Fact #1- 5 months of intensive SEO work was done  for a company at the cost of $4,000 (total).

Fact #2- The company went from 10 unique clicks/day to 800 unique clicks/day in that period of time.  A total of about 30,000 clicks over 5 months.

Fact #3- After the 5 months of SEO work stopped, the clicks still come in steadily at about 700/day.

Fact #4- 700 clicks/day would come to about $252,00 worth of Adword generated clicks in a year’s time.

Fact #5- The company paid only $4000 and they’re getting the same amount of clicks that $252,000 would get you in one year.

Long after the SEO work was done, the clicks still roll in! In this case, it shows that SEO is not only cheaper, but long lasting as well.  And even though the results aren’t as instant as PPC, the hard work of laying a solid foundation can definitely pay off.

Do you choose SEO over PPC, or visa versa?  Comment below and let me know what you think about this case study.

It looks like the good folks at Google are rocking the boat yet again. Now they’re adding your page load time as an element of their quality score. Check it out…

http://adwords.blogspot.com/2008/03/landing-page-load-time-will-soon-be.htm

So, if you have a big, fat page that takes forever to load, you might want to shorten it a bit or optimize it somehow, or you’re likely to see those minimum bids go up to $5 or $10 again.

…hello Google “Placement Targeting”.

Don’t worry, Google Site-Targeting isn’t going anywhere…it’s just getting a name change and a face-lift.

NOTE: If you haven’t heard of Google Site-Targeting, it’s “the other half of AdWords” that almost no one ever talks about. Essentially, Google Site-Targeting (now Placement Targeting) is just like traditional Google AdWords, only instead of bidding on keywords you bid on specific webpages that you want to advertise on. This allows you to take your marketing beyond the Google search engine, and unlike appearing in Google “Content Network” YOU get to choose the sites you want to appear on and where you want to appear.

Until recently, Google Site-Targeting only supported CPM (or cost per impression) bids, so as with traditional banner advertising, advertisers were charged every time their ad was shown (as opposed to PPC where you’re only charged when someone clicks on the ad). Well now it appears that Google is letting their advertisers bid on a cost-per-click basis

You can see what Google has to say about these changes by going here:

https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=77787&hl=en_US

I’ve always believe that Google Site-Targeting was an under-used and unappreciated traffic generation tool, but this change to allow CPC bidding will no doubt change that. So, if you haven’t tried out Google Site-Targeting…err…Google PLACEMENT-Targeting, now is the time to do it!

If you already have an AdWords account, just login and click the “placement-targeted” link (which is right next to the “keyword-targeted” link) in the New Campaign section. If you look around I’m sure you’ll be able to find it.