When to Bypass Paid Search Campaigns
Posted: January 19th, 2009
Although a lot of attention is usually placed on how to pay less for keywords in PPC campaigns and how to optimize paid search campaigns in general, we rarely look at cases in which we can bypass paid search altogether. This may seem counterintuitive, as the most effective way to cut pay-per-click costs is to completely slash the PPC budget. But under what circumstances would it make sense to opt-out of paid search?
Effective SEO Initiatives
If your website already has strong rankings for your main targeted keywords, then a parallel PPC campaign may not be necessary. Also keep in mind that natural organic listings are more likely to be clicked than paid listings. This observation is especially prevalent if those in your market are tech-savvy, as they easily recognize sponsored ads and posses ad blindness.
Even if you’re trying to reach a not-so tech-savvy audience, why pay extra if chances are that they will click through via the organic listings anyway?
Low Search Traffic
Keywords phrases that aren’t often searched could be dropped from your PPC account completely. While the bid prices for these keywords may be low, the time spent managing these campaigns may be wasted on an inefficient search marketer.
Simply put, the search volume is immaterial and of no consequence. Time can be better spent elsewhere, instead of on the management of these campaign bids.
SEMs using Yahoo Search Marketing should definitely consider this suggestion, as there have been reports of Yahoo staff clandestinely accessing YSM accounts and secretly raising minimum bid amounts.
A more effective strategy for capturing this negligible traffic may be to use some light search engine optimization. Lower estimated query numbers are indicative of less competition within SERPs, which in turn means that some basic SEO should be sufficient. This is also less expensive in the long-run, and particularly so, should that search query trend upwards.
Tags: pay-per-click, SEM, SEO, Yahoo Search Marketing
I personaly not very keen on PPC. However, I am also aware of power of PPC if it is done correctly.
For web-savvy person, any paid search or advertisement might not work really well but even for non-web savvy users, organic search will still win because they seems more reliable.
Wonderful Article! I’m recommending it to my clients!