PPC v Natural Search – A Cost Comparison Case Study

By Glenn Murray | Advertising Copywriter & SEO Copywriter *

The attraction of Pay Per Click (PPC) online advertising is
undeniable. Each click costs virtually nothing, you only pay
for the clicks you get, and you set your own daily budget so
you know exactly how much you're going to spend. Most
importantly, your listing appears instantly.

On the other hand, a high ranking in the natural search
results seems unobtainable. There's a perception that
hundreds of thousands of other businesses are competing for
your keywords, and that makes it seem like a real rat-race.
And it also seems like such a big mountain to climb; it's
true that it can take months to reach the first page for
your target keywords. To make matters worse, thousands of
opportunistic (and some very dodgy) `SEO companies' have
emerged, looking to make a quick and big buck out of market
naivety. So to CEOs, BDMs, marketing managers, webmasters,
and business owners, the road to natural search ranking
seems expensive, risky, and beset with traffic.

But does this mean you should forget natural search?

Definitely not!

Firstly, most user studies to date have found that people
pay more attention to natural search results because they're
more relevant. That's the foundation of the success of
companies like Google and Yahoo (and the reason they keep
their indexing rules a secret).

What's more, it's important to put things in perspective.
Hundreds of thousands of other businesses may be competing
for your keywords, but in most cases, they're at least as
confused and disheartened as you. So the sooner you figure
out the real story, the sooner you'll have the jump on them.


And yes, it can take a while to reach the top, but because
your competition is – for the most part – traveling blind,
your early progress will normally be quite quick. In fact,
for most businesses, it's not until you reach the top few
pages that your progress will slow.

And again yes, there ARE some dodgy SEO companies out there.
But there are also some very good ones. (Go to
www.WebProNews.com and sign up to a forum if you want to
find out who they are.) So long as you know the basics of
SEO you won't be taken for a ride. (See
http://www.divinewrite.com/SEOCEO.htm for a rundown of SEO
basics in layperson's terms.)

But let's talk bottom line…

Is it more expensive to obtain a high ranking?

Certainly not! In comparison with other forms of advertising
– even PPC in the long run – reaching the top of the
rankings is NOT expensive. The following case study explains
why.

CASE STUDY

For the past year, I've been working hard on the natural
search results for my copywriting business, Divine Write.
For my primary keyword, I'm now on page 1 of Google.com (out
of approximately 900,000 search results). I've done this
simply by writing helpful articles and submitting them for
publication on the Internet. Luckily for me, I'm an SEO
copywriter, so writing articles is all in a day's work. But
had I paid an SEO copywriter to write my articles for me,
I'd have spent approximately USD$5,000.

Over the same period, I spent approximately USD$3,000 on
Google AdWords (my ads appeared towards the top of the paid
listings).

Now I hear what you're saying; my natural search campaign
definitely cost more in the first year than my AdWords
campaign. But now that I've reached the top of Google.com,
I've paused all my AdWords ads, so I'm not paying anything.
If I hadn't chased the natural search results, I'd have
continued paying for AdWords, spending at least another
USD$3,000 next year on AdWords, and another USD$3,000 the
year after that, and so on.

Of course, I have to retain my high ranking. If I was paying
someone to write my articles, that would involve an
investment of approximately USD$1,000 per year (a saving of
67% each year).

So it breaks down like this:

Google AdWords investment: 2 yrs = $6,000, 3 yrs = $9,000, 4
yrs = $12,000, 5 yrs = $15,000

Natural search investment: 2 yrs = $6,000, 3 yrs = $7,000, 4
yrs = $8,000, 5 yrs = $9,000

Conclusion

Obviously the competition for keywords in the copywriting
field isn't as fierce as in a lot of other industries, so
the actual dollar investment discussed in this case study
may not apply directly to your business. The important thing
to understand is that – over time – a high ranking in the
natural search results can actually cost less than a high
position in the (arguably less effective) paid listings.

Also, these figures are based on me submitting articles to
various article banks on the Internet myself. (This is a
routine task requiring little skill. You should be able to
purchase a list of 50 or more article submit sites from your
SEO copywriter or consultant for as little as USD$99.)

* Glenn Murray is an advertising copywriter and SEO
copywriter and heads copywriting studio Divine Write. He can
be contacted on Sydney +612 4334 6222 or at
mailto:glenn@divinewrite.com. Visit
http://www.divinewrite.com for further details or more FREE
articles.