I was kind of expecting this.
When I posted my story about how I out-SEO’d the local SEO firms, I was #2 for the search term “St. Louis online marketing” and #1 for both “St. Louis Internet marketing” and “St. Louis marketing” in the Google 10-Pack.
Then, just 2 days later, I was #6 for “St. Louis online marketing” and not even on the first page for the other two terms.
Why?
I don’t know.
Maybe Google changed their algorithm for the local search rankings.
Maybe a ticked off competitor reported my listing to Google because they didn’t like me using the keyword “Internet marketing” in front of my company name.
Or maybe there’s some other reason that triggered this fall from grace.
In any case, it was fun while it lasted.
And, more importantly, getting “slapped” by Google for whatever reason gave me a reminder of why I chose to focus on PPC instead of SEO in the first place.
Here’s the deal folks.
If your business and/or business’ online marketing efforts relies on free traffic, you don’t have a business. You have a mirage.
Why?
Well, what happens when the traffic stops? (And I say “when” not “if” because it’s gonna happen.)
It could happen because Google changes their algorithm.
It could happen because the competition gets better at SEO than you.
It could happen because you (or your SEO firm) get lazy once you get that coveted first page ranking which causes you to tumble in the rankings.
But whatever the reason, if all you’re doing is relying on free traffic, the effect is devastating. In fact, here’s a story of a local business who fell off the first page of Google and ended up going out of business.
If you know, however, that you can profitably pay for traffic to your website, it’s a whole ‘nother ballgame.
Because you know you can always buy more traffic. If traffic from one source dries up for whatever reason, you can buy it from somewhere else.
When you rely on “free” traffic, however, you just can’t turn the traffic faucet on that quickly.
One of the main reasons I was drawn to Google AdWords (pay per click advertising) in the first place is control.
You simply have more control over your advertising efforts when you pay for them. If you know you can pay $1 in advertising and get $1.01 or $2 or $10 in return, you are in control.
Then your business’ success is not determined by Google or anyone else. Because you can always buy more traffic. From Google. From Yahoo!. From MSN. From web sites. From blogs. Even from offline mediums.
When you know you can convert traffic into sales, you’ve got yourself a solid online marketing plan for your business and have firmly put yourself in control of your business’ success.
Listen, I know how appealing the thought of free traffic is. Especially for a small business. Especially in times like these.
But there are no guarantees with free traffic. You can spend months and months and pay an SEO specialist $1000s of dollars to try to get your business ranked #1 for your chosen keywords.
But you may never get there.
And even if you do get there, one little algorithm tweak by Google can send you spiraling back to oblivion.
To me, that’s an incredibly risky strategy.
Now my point here is not to say SEO isn’t important. It is, and will remain an essential part of any online marketing campaign.
But if it’s all you rely on and if you don’t first prove that you can profitably buy traffic and can turn that traffic faucet on at will, you’re putting your business in a very dangerous position.
Just one last point here. And it’s about diversity in marketing.
If I was relying solely on Google Local Search for traffic and leads for Words That Click, I’d be screwed about now. Luckily that’s not the case for me.
But some businesses do rely on one source to drive all their traffic. If that’s the case for you, my advice is to diversify. Quickly!
It’s critical that you have traffic coming from different sources – paid search, SEO, articles, videos, social media and more.
Yes, there will be one that you probably focus on more than the others and will probably drive more traffic than the others. But if it’s your only source of traffic (especially if it’s free) you’re in an extremely risky state.
So diversify your online (and offline) marketing efforts. Be wary of building an online marketing strategy that’s based on free traffic. And though I don’t plan to devote too much more time to it, I’ve still got a few more tricks up my sleeve so I expect to be back on top of the local 10-Pack soon! 
Related posts:
- Google Local Search: How a Lowly PPC Specialist Beat The Local SEO Firms at Their Own Game
- Facebook PPC vs Google PPC: Which Is Right For Your Small Business?
- The 4 Ingredients For Effective Search Engine Optimization
- Facebook PPC: Why It Has Savvy Marketers Drooling All Over Themselves
- Why Free Search Engine Traffic is a Myth
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
Great article and an important reminder. Always try to control the hand that feeds you otherwise it could be ripped away in a millisecond.
SEO is obviously very important and so is PPC and I appreciate the great insight. Can’t wait to come up with new ideas for The Rise To The Top!
I’m not sure scare tactics are the best way to approach this. SEO is one of the most awesome ways to increase traffic.
Look, both SEO and PPC rely on keywords. What’s the difference? Placement on the SERP and the cost of the click. Plenty of my clients (read *all* of my clients) would prefer to pay $0 for a click versus pay $1 for a click.
Not to say PPC doesn’t have it’s place, but to tell a business that PPC is the end-all solution is pretty biased. I’d like to see some stats that tell me how many people click on PPC v organic rankings. And not one written by another PPC guy.
And the business that “went out of business” because of their fall from Google grace – they were using PPC as well. How can you blame their failure solely on (as you said) “free traffic”?
Thanks for the response Will. I appreciate you sharing your point of view.
First, you’re absolutely right. The company in the article I referenced was using PPC as well. I did not mean to imply that their going out of business was due to relying solely on free traffic. I should have been clearer that their problem was relying too heavily on free traffic. Thanks for bringing that to my attention so I could clarify my point.
However, I strongly disagree with your assertion that the difference between SEO and PPC is just placement on the SERPs and the costs per click.
I’ll go back to my what I wrote in this post and say the biggest difference is that PPC gives you more control.
More control over a visitor’s point of entry to your site. More control over where you appear in the rankings. More control over your message (and the ability to test different messages, which is perhaps the greatest advantage of PPC). More control over when your ads appear. More control over what keywords you rank for. More control over how many keywords you rank for. More control over quickly getting your ads to appear in the rankings. And more control over testing every aspect of your campaign from keywords to landing pages.
And as far as costs, there is no such things as free traffic. While the click itself in the organic rankings may be free, to get ranked highly for any sort of competitive keyword is anything but.
All that said, I don’t have anything against SEO. Many more people do click on the organic rankings than the paid ads. The point of my post was not to knock SEO and definitely was not to say that PPC is the end-all solution.
The 2 main points I was trying to make were simply that relying solely on “free” traffic is a very dangerous proposition and that having diversity in your online marketing campaign is vital to its long term success. And I stand by those points 100%.
Thanks!
Adam
Interesting conversation, Adam and Will!
I’ve had a lot more experience in SEO than PPC. There pro’s and con’s to both and you’ve spelled them out already. But I have to chirp up here and say I think it’s a bit misleading to say that SEO costs $0/click. Really? I guess if there’s no value in time.
Thanks for the reply Adam. You’ve brought up some great points. Control over a landing page, for some industries, is well worth paying $1/click (or whatever) for that privilege. There are plenty of ways to do similar testing with SEO as there is with PPC, but with PPC you definitely have the advantage of time. Make a change to your PPC campaign and you can see the results nearly instantaneously. Make a change with SEO and you have to wait days or weeks.
As for cost, you’re right, there’s no such thing as a free click. Well, maybe there is for my website, because I’m doing my own work. But for my clients, they’d argue that their clicks aren’t free. If they were, I’d be out of business!
I like to compare an SEO campaign to a person pulling a freight train. It takes time to get it started and would be hell to get it rolling. But once it is, the amount of effort to keep it rolling is minimal. Traffic continues to come to a website even if the SEO “stops pulling”.
With PPC, the train can be immediately at cruising speed. Problem is, once you stop your PPC campaign, the traffic stops immediately. If there’s no SEO in place, the client is basically dead in the water.
Love the train analogy Will.
I would add though that whether you use SEO or PPC, it’s wise to be collecting email addresses on your website so you can follow up with past visitors via email marketing. So while the train may stop, you should leave a car or bus at the station so the passengers’ journey doesn’t completely grind to a halt (not sure if that analogy makes sense or not, but I’m going with it!).
Anyway, this is a great discussion and the bottom line is it shows that there is not one silver bullet when it comes to Internet marketing. There are pros and cons to all the strategies out there and the best strategy is to use as many of them as possible.
Great discussion guys. my advice to clients is that they should be doing both. Going big on PPC at the beginning of a campaign and scaling back as the SEO kicks in. However, Adam, you made some great points… especially in regards to getting a business model that works and that is under your control. I think that is what I like about the organic side, though, the game.
Hi Russ-
Your name just came up in a conversation I had with Fred Miller earlier today. Thanks for visiting my blog and for your comment. I agree that PPC can be especially helpful at the beginning of a campaign. I would say, however, that if your PPC campaign is generating a positive ROI that instead of scaling back, you buy as many more profitable clicks as you can for your business no matter what your SEO efforts are producing.
Thanks!
Adam
Interesting viewpoint, if a little cynical. I agree, relying on one source for leads, advertising etc is a BAD idea, but don’t rule out free traffic completely either, it can still be a great resource if used correctly.
I like to compare an SEO campaign to a person pulling a freight train. It takes time to get it started and would be hell to get it rolling. But once it is, the amount of effort to keep it rolling is minimal. Traffic continues to come to a website even if the SEO “stops pulling”.
I thought that I read somewhere that organic optimization returns 20 times the investment than pay per click. Nevertheless, he is right. If you rely solely on free listings then you are playing a dangerous game. If you get slapped then the pain your business will suffer can have a dramatic effect on your business. Advertising is like investing…you have to diversify.
Your right, there are a number of reason that could have seen you drop you, personally I find that local competitors are quite aggressive when they see you owning the space and you really picked a keyword that would put you in the sights of people who know what they are doing within the SEO game, that would be my guess for the tumble, poking an angry dog with a stik never helped anyone but saying that I can see you did want you did to prove a point/add som clarity and possibly just to get under some peoples skin! Nice one.
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