PPC Advertising: On The Road To Organic Traffic
Author: Scott Lindsay

I have always been an advocate of using Pay Per Click (PPC)
advertising as a short-term solution to a long-term objective.
The use of a fully optimized site is a vitally important part
of site growth and reasonable organic traffic.

This thought is borne out in a finding by WebSideStory that
indicates that PPC advertising provided a conversion rate of
3.4% while sites relying on organic (optimized) sites saw a
conversion rate of 3.13%. The study began in January of 2006
and ran for eight months and more than 57 million search engine
visits were used to document the findings.

A combination of both techniques may improve the overall
conversion rate, but much of the decision-making you are faced
with has to do with perceived value.

For instance, if your business is relatively new and you are
waiting for the various search engines to find you and rank
your site you may discover PPC advertising to be a primary tool
in client conversion. If, however, you are ranked well in search
engines you may not feel a compelling need to purchase PPC
advertising or if you do your marketing budget may be reduced
in size.

The temptation is to simply rely on PPC advertising without
working toward proper optimization of your site. I suppose on
one level this may make sense IF you are only interested in
purchasing PPC advertising for the duration of your business.

Essentially if you are willing to provide some work at the
beginning of your site design to develop proper optimization
techniques you will ultimately save money in the long run.

PPC advertising definitely has a place in online marketing, but
it doesn't have to be your only long-term strategy.

Of course, the positive aspect of PPC advertising is the highly
effective nature of where the ad ultimately appears. PPC is a
highly targeted type of advertising that makes the best use of
marketing dollars.

PPC advertising should not be avoided, but rather seen for what
it is; a stop gap client conversion technique. The above
statistics point to the fact that PPC advertising is effective,
but not significantly more so than the site rankings of an
optimized site.

When you have a plan that encompasses both short-term and
long-term objectives you may likely see PPC advertising as a
great way to jump start your online business, but there may
come a time when you may find yourself relying on PPC
advertising less and less. When that happens you can feel
confident you have done an admirable job in optimizing your
site for organic traffic.


About The Author: Scott Lindsay is a web developer and
entrepreneur. He is the founder of HighPowerSites and many
other web projects. Get your own website online in just 5
minutes with HighPowerSites at: http://www.highpowersites.com.
Start your own ebook business with BooksWealth at:
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