SEO vs. PPC: Which Is Better For Your Business?

There has been a roaring debate over the use of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) versus PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising and which one provides better value for your online marketing. While those in one camp or another are obviously going to have their opinions on the matter, there are a few research done to compare both of these.

Here in no unfiltered terms, is our analysis of the debate between the two marketing arms. Firstly, let's identify both of the differences.

Differences Between SEO & PPC

Clients these days are likely feeling the push towards the Internet and away from more traditional means of advertising… for good reason, of course.

According to Jupiter Research, it shows that an astounding 81% of consumers are going to use search engine results to determine their purchases. Imagine ignoring more than 3/4 of your audiences by not engaging in online marketing; the repercussions are sobering.

But many businesses don't appreciate the distinctions between organic search engine results and paid search engine marketing. That is where the distinction between SEO and PPC come into play.

Here's how you can differentiate between SEO and PPC on Google results page.

SEO marketing brings a synthesis to your website's content and draws visitors in through the main channels of search engine results.

If you are a psychiatrist in Pittsburgh or a plumber in Piscataway, you will want your business to come up in the first page of organic search engine results.

You'll stand a higher chance to get more traffic for your site when you're in the first page of organic search engine results.

Appearing on the first page of Google can also ensure that your traffic comes from the visitors who want your product or people who have been seeking out your service. That also means that your organic search engine optimization is poised.

PPC advertising, on the other hand, is a little bit different. These are the “sponsored ads” which run alongside your search engine results and will change from search to search.

For example, if you pull up a search engine search for cycling shops in Portland Oregon, you are going to find many of the most popular SEO results in your main search. But along the side of the search, you'll find sponsored PPC ads that only unlock value for the host if there are click through to the websites along the side.

Although it appears at the top of Google page, but this doesn't mean that you are going to find the “best” or most relevant cycling shop in Portland Oregon in the PPC lane. In fact, many times, the PPC ads that you find are from new entrants into the field, those who have been untested and those who are desperately seeking exposure.

Of course, there are also occasions where the SEO and PPC results may look very similar. This may be because, in this example, the most prominent cycling shop in Portland Oregon has also cornered the PPC market and has deployed itself into both realms.

How Do SEO And PPC Help Your Business?

As we discussed earlier, the uses of SEO and PPC are quite different and the research spells that out. Let's say you are a new entrant into a market and you are trying to establish yourself in the market through effective search engine results.

The quickest way to do this is through the use of PPC advertising, but is it always the best?

An article by Moz seems to tell a different story. Organic SEO results from a search are 8.5 times more likely to be clicked through than a PPC sponsored link. 8.5 times. That's huge.

Consider your own search engine behavior. When you seek out any type of information from a search engine, what are the first things that you click on? A great majority of us would probably say that we click on the organic search results before we would click on a paid link to the side.

So even though building up organic search engine results through optimized content that users will seek out may take a little longer, the facts remain clear. Your business is 8.5 times more likely to get the customers and the results you are after if you use legitimate organic search engine results.

Benefits of SEO And PPC

If the numbers are truly so staggering in favor of SEO advertising, many people may ask then why anyone would do anything differently.

The question is not about whether SEO or PPC is more superior, but more to which is appropriate for your website.

The reasons to implement PPC are multi-fold:

Introduction:

If you are new to the marketplace and you are trying to introduce yourself and your product to a new audience, PPC ads may be a good option for a limited release. You don't want to stay there for too long but if you have an introduction and you are trying to elevate yourself to the top of search results quickly, this is a viable option.

Specials:

Are you running a limited-time special offer? If that's the case then you may wish to zoom your ranks to the top of the PPC results. You are not going to get nearly the traction you would with organic results but many advertisers swear by the PPC metric for limited time offers.

Dominance:

If you already are at the top of all the organic SEO results and you are simply trying to elbow your competition out of the market then using PPC ads can't hurt. Of course, you are going to have to pay for this individual click through but if your dominance in the marketplace is already so huge, then use of PPC will only further embolden your spot in the market.

Ignorance:

The final metric to your preference of PPC versus SEO may just be ignorance. If you didn't know the dreadfully low click through rates of PPC and you thought that you were doing your business a lot more good, then you may use PPC. However as the research continues to show, PPC is a vastly inferior platform to use when compared against SEO.

Your Visitors Will Appreciate SEO More Than PPC

While the research and results have shown to be far superior for one over the other, consider your own search engine searches and the results that you prefer.

Seeking out and finding what you are looking for through search engine trolling is far more laborious task, but the end result is vastly more satisfying.

As you can see, SEO enables you to build a trusting relationship with your customers compared to PPC.

When you hit upon that retailer, that undiscovered corner gem bakery, that earnest lawyer or doctor or that delectably romantic restaurant, you don't ever forget it. These are retailers who have a solid online presence and offer a service to their customers that simply can't be matched.

So is your SEO results. The fact is that most of the time when you click through PPC ads they don't “quite” fit. Broadly speaking, the PPC results you click on may be similar to what you were looking for or kind of in the same neighborhood, but when you drill down deeper, the end result isn't nearly as satisfying or as correct for what you were seeking out.

If you do push through and use this retailer that you have found through a PPC ad, you may be surprisingly satisfied! And that's great.. because that may instigate you to continue to use PPC ads.

However, more often than not it's these non-organic, broadly targeted ads for goods and services on the periphery for what your search was about which fall flat.

Conclusion: SEO Beats PPC

Your business will definitely do well if you invest the time and energy into creating SEO advertising that targets your audiences. There are also case studies that have proven SEO is better than PPC, so there's no need to worry about it.

Although it may take some time to see your SEO effort, but it will be worth it for your business. PPC is fast, but how long will it last?

Remember the vast scope and inevitable limitations of your business, remember that your local customers still want the local, targeted service you provide, and your online SEO marketing will be so much more successful than you could ever have imagined.

Click here for more info on SEO vs. PPC

Via: http://seopressor.com/blog/seo-vs-ppc-which-is-better-for-your-business/?utm_source=aweber_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=april_15_2016

Marine Products:Boating Market Launches Marketing Campaign

Marine Products:Boating Industry Launches Marketing Project

For the first time in U.S. boating history, marine products producers will spend countless dollars promoting the benefits of leisure boating and boat ownership.



The National Marine Manufacturers Association's "Grow Boating" project and $12 million marketing blitz consists of nationwide marketing purchases, direct mail and other efforts that the industry hopes will connect with possible boaters whose spare time is growing more fractionalized.



" Our objective is making the 2 finest days in a boater's life every Saturday and Sunday," said Thom Dammrich, president of the National Marine Manufacturers Association, throughout a presentation to market leaders at the current Miami International Boat Show.



Yamaha, among the largest marine product brand names on the planet, accepted contribute hundreds of thousands of dollars in support of the project. Yamaha is positive that the cash spent will even more the methods the business launched internally to make boating more appealing for households.



" We at http://raritaneng.comhave been participated in promoting boating as an excellent family activity for a variety of years now and we are pleased to see the entire boating market joining us in this venture," stated Mark Speaks, president of Yamaha WaterCraft. "There is lots of proof indicating that households that boat together are healthier, happier and more successful. Any parent that has actually been boating with their family comprehends exactly what an excellent method this is to restore the ties that bind the family together."



Yamaha WaterCraft Group is one of the few companies in the boating market enjoying double-digit development and is a significant voice behind the market's Grow Boating project. To satisfy the requirements of new entrants to the boating lifestyle, Yamaha offers brand-new, completely included family watercraft starting around $7,000.



According to federal studies taking a look at U.S. leisure trends, 65 million Americans reported that they go boating each year, and 28 million Americans reported that they ride personal boat. Raritan Engineering can be reached for more information on marine products.

Why Mobile-Friendly Website Is Important For Your SEO

A mobile-friendly website from Virtual Focused Marketing is an essential for every marketer to develop a successful SEO strategy. There are more marketers optimizing their websites to be mobile-friendly as well, so what are you waiting for?

With more people using their mobiles to access the Internet these days, you are risking to lose visitors if you still don't optimize your website for mobile. But before we get into the details, you can check how mobile-friendly your website is from this tool by Google Developers.

If you get a good score, then well done! But if your website is not doing well, it means that it's time for you to optimize your website for mobile and here are the reasons why you should do so:

1. The Increase Of Mobile Adoption Rate

The mobile adoption rate is increasing every year ever since Google included the websites that are optimized for mobile as “mobile-friendly” on the mobile search results. Whereas for the websites that are not mobile-friendly, it will affect your click-through rate (CTR) negatively because users tend to exit the sites when they found out that it's not mobile-friendly.

If you didn't know, Google is already using mobile-friendly websites as a ranking factor. So if your website isn't ranking well on Google, you should really think about it. What problem can it be? Is it because it's not mobile-friendly? Well, it could be.

Based on a report from comScore, mobile usage has outreached desktop usage for the first time in the mid of 2014, and it's still increasing during 2015.

This has proven that you should start optimizing your website for mobile. You wouldn't want to lose visitors, right?

To have a mobile-friendly website, you have to make sure that the font size and images used in your website wouldn't be too small or else your visitors will have a hard time reading your content.

Remember, you have to keep the visitors happy when they stumble upon your website, even if it's your mobile site.

2. Mobile Is Convenient To Everyone

As inbound marketers, we all know that it is extremely important to help our visitors to complete their tasks, whether it is reading an interesting article or checking on a store's location.

Well, we don't usually bring our laptop when we're just going out for dinner, right? Our mobile is always with us. So whenever we're looking for the best place to eat mac and cheese or the best steak in town, we will just search for it on our mobile. There is no need for us to turn on our laptops just to search for one thing.

Mobile is so convenient for us these days. Even when we want to read for some reviews or short articles, especially before we sleep, we can just read it on our mobile instead of turning on our laptop. Not only it is convenient, but I'd say that it saves a lot of time as well! At least, we don't have to wait for our laptop to load.

If you still don't believe that mobile usage is increasing, let's take a look at this infographic about the mobile usage in 2015:

The statistics given are only for 2015. Can you imagine how much it has increased in 2016?

You can't deny the fact that the average user engages with their mobile device for 200 times a day. And this is why you should have a mobile-friendly website. People are browsing on mobile more than on desktop.

3. Keep Up With The Industry

Many websites are already making their sites mobile-friendly, are you sure that you don't want to keep up with them?

BuzzFeed has made a good move on optimizing their site for mobile as they know they have a lot of visitors using mobile.

If you noticed, most blog posts title are now starting with where, why, and how. This is because many users are searching using voice searches such as Siri, Google Now, andCortana. For example, when they use voice search, they don't usually start by saying “SEO”. In fact, they will talk as if they're talking to a friend, “what is SEO?”.

This is actually one of the best parts of having a mobile-friendly website because you can provide the users with what they want, even when they are asking questions like they're communicating with a friend. In this way, they will feel satisfied because you can give them accurate information and they will definitely visit your site again.

Like I mentioned on the above, mobile is convenient, which explains why most people are searching for information using mobile rather than desktop. This has proven that mobile is taking over desktop and if you still don't have a mobile-friendly website, you will be left out. However, it is still not too late now for you to optimize your website for mobile.

4. Improve Engagement And User Experience

Not only you have to keep up with the industry, but with a mobile-friendly website, you will get to increase the engagement with your visitors and their user experience.

Since it has proven that many people are using mobile searches, imagine if you have a mobile-friendly website. Your visitors will stay even longer on your site, which will help to improve their time on site.

If your mobile site is stated as mobile-friendly by Google Developers, then you will highly likely improve your user experience.

When your mobile site is easy to navigate, your bounce rate will reduce, and eventually, your visitors will spend more time on your site, which will increase the chances of them purchasing your products or services.

But if the visitors can't browse and read your content on mobile, they will leave your site.Kissmetrics has shown that a 1 second delay in page response can results in a 7% reduction in conversions. Imagine how many sales you could have lost if you don't have a mobile-friendly website.

Therefore, you have to keep your visitors happy when they are browsing on your mobile site. 

5. Mobile Shopping Is Taking Over

These days, online shoppers have quickly started to favor using their mobile devices when browsing and buying products online. Even now, we have apps like Etsy and Shopkick to make online shopping easier.

Some consumers prefer to do business with an online retailer if it has a mobile-friendly site because it makes things easier. Although desktop is widely used for the majority of online sales, but mobile is catching up right now.

Like what I mentioned earlier, mobile is really convenient for all of us. So when the users wanted to purchase something online, they can just install the apps or go directly to the website on their mobile and make a purchase from there instead of turning on their laptops.

Since users are spending more time on mobiles than desktop, there is really no reasons for you to not optimize your website for mobile.

Conclusion: Be Mobile Ready

As pointed out, if you want more conversions and sales for your business, it is a must to have a mobile-friendly website. In this year of 2016, having a mobile-friendly website will be extremely important compared to 2015 as Google is using mobile-friendly sites as a ranking factor. This means that if you do not have a mobile version of your site, you will be missing the Google ranking.

Click here for more info on being Mobile Ready

Via: http://seopressor.com/blog/why-mobile-friendly-website-is-important-for-seo/?utm_source=aweber_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=april_15_2016

Don't click 'like' on Facebook again until you read this

Facebook has changed the way people do a lot of things online. For example, you probably notice yourself reflexively clicking 'like' on anything your friends post on Facebook, even if it's just to acknowledge you saw it. Scammers are taking advantage of that reflex for a dangerous scam called “like-farming.”

What is like-farming?

Like-farming is when scammers post an attention-grabbing story on Facebook for the express purpose of cultivating likes and shares. Based on the way Facebook works, the more likes and shares a post has, the more likely it is to show up in people's News Feeds.

This gives the scammer more eyeballs for posts that trick people out of information or send them to malicious downloads. The big question, of course, is why Facebook doesn't stop these posts before they get too big. And that's where the real scam comes in.

How the scam works

Scammers have found a simple way to fly under the radar during the early phases of their operation. The story they originally post to Facebook has nothing dangerous about it. It's just a regular story that anyone might post. That was the warning from one local Better Business Bureau last year.

Only after the post gets a certain number of likes and shares does the scammer edit it and add something malicious. They might start promoting products or sell the page information in attempt to get credit card data. In fact, if you go back through your history of liked posts, you might find that some of them have changed to something you wouldn't have liked in a million years. By the way, if you're not sure how to review your likes, click here for the step-by-step instructions.

So, what kinds of stories do scammers start with to trick people into liking and sharing?

USA TODAY

Q&A: Avoid a big tech rip-off

 

Posts that should give you pause

One popular type of story is the emotional one. You've definitely seen the posts showing rescue animals and asking you to like if you think they're cute. Or maybe it's a medical story where you're asked to like that the person was cured or to let them know they're still beautiful after surgery.

There are also the posts that ask for a like to show that you're against something the government is doing, or that you disagree with something terrible happening in the world. Or maybe it's the ones that say “If I get X number of likes, then something amazing will happen for me” or “I was challenged to get X number of likes.”

Basically, any post that asks you to like it for emotional reasons, unless you know the person who created the original post, is quite probably a like-farm post. Of course, emotional posts aren't the only types of post you need to watch for.

Other types of scam posts to avoid

There are a lot of scams on Facebook and most of them can be used for like-farming. A popular one, for example, is a post that asks you to like or share so you can win something cool. These pop up most often when Apple launches a new iPhone or iPad.

You might have seen recently during the huge Powerball frenzy people posting on Facebook saying anyone who likes their post will get a share of their winnings. How real do you think those were?

Just on Thursday, police in Australia warned Facebook users of a like farming scam that attempted to lure customers of Qantas Airlines.

ROAD WARRIOR VOICES

Thousands fall for Qantas first-class ticket hoax. Here's how to never be one of them

 

What about brain-teaser posts, such as the ones that have you like or share if you can read the words backwards or solve a tricky math problem? Yep, those are often like-farm posts, too.

It isn't just posts either; it can also be pages. A scammer might set up a page for “I love puppies” or what appears to be a worthy company or organization. It puts up enough content to get a lot of likes, then switches the content to spam and scams. Once you've liked the page, everything new the scammers put up goes on your News Feed and, in some cases, your friends' feeds as well.

How to avoid like-farming

Your best bet to avoid like-farming is to be very judicious about what you like and share on Facebook. Don't just reflexively click “like” on everything. Take a look at where the post is coming from. If it's from someone you don't recognize, it could be a friend of a friend or it could be a complete stranger. It would be good to find out.

Notice the content and whether it promises anything for liking or sharing. If it does, it's a good clue that it's a scam of some kind. The same goes if you feel pushed or pressured into clicking like or share. Click here for 5 Facebook scams that continue to spread like wildfire.

Don't forget that, in the end, minimizing your likes is more than just a good security measure. It also reduces the clutter in your friends' news feeds, and their clutter in yours, so you can all spend more time seeing the really important posts. That's a win-win for everyone.

Via: http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/columnist/komando/2016/03/04/dont-click-like-facebook-again-until-you-read/81264440/

Making Sense of Google's Changes that Just Blew Up Online Ads for Local Businesses

Yup, Google did it again. Last week, the company dropped a bomb on small businesses who rely on the Adwords Pay-Per-Click program, by announcing that they will no longer show ads along the righthand side of the search engine results pages (SERP). Ad spots 5-9 that used to show on the right rail will now show at the bottom of the SERP, underneath the final organic results.

To cushion the blow, the SERP will now feature a fourth ad at the top of the page, above organic results.

There's really no way to overstate what a massive change this is for everyone in the SEM industry. But it's going to have a more profound - and even devastating - effect on locally-oriented businesses who had relied on Adwords as a key marketing tool.

Why Google made this change is certainly a subject for debate. However, there's no denying that there will be a barrelful of losers who directly suffer from this change. Here are just a few:

Small Businesses Who Advertise Locally
Thousands of small businesses currently use Adwords to drive leads, generate phone calls, promote downloads, or achieve any of a dozen common marketing goals. Targeted, relevant, and cost-effective, Adwords were the most obvious place to compete with larger players. Even tiny companies who ran smart campaigns could drive value out of Adwords at lower positions. That's not going to be the case anymore.

Local SEM Providers
Big local SEM providers (you know their names), are already struggling with harsh churn problems, and are going to see their campaigns suffer tremendously. With thousands of locally-targeted clients, they could afford to bring on campaigns at scale, knowing that there were 9-10 relevant positions on a SERP for their campaigns to appear on. Now, however, these campaigns are going to be forced to increase their campaign budgets and lower their ROI expectations. It's move to the top, or move out altogether. That's not a message that most local SEM providers want to deliver to their clients.

Car Dealerships
With dozens of franchises in any specific DMA, there will only be 4 spots at the top of the page… and some will most likely be taken up by the national efforts of the Hondas, Fords and Mercedes of the world. That doesn't leave a lot of room for dealerships to compete for active, in-market car-buying prospects. It's a severe blow to these big local businesses.

Local Insurance Companies
It doesn't take many searches to know that Geico, Nationwide, Liberty and the other national insurance companies are going to dominate the paid listings. This leaves local agents and agencies out in the cold. Those clicks are simply too expensive, and the margin of error too small for local insurance types to compete.

Media Providers
Dozens of companies competed to sell consumers Dish TV and similar services to local prospects. That number will soon plummet in a winner-take-all type of environment, as many of these providers relied on Adwords to drive large quantities of leads and traffic. Not anymore.

Assisted Living and Elder Care
In an inherently local business, many large networks of assisted living and elder care facilities are operating on a national or semi-national basis. They will actively crowd out smaller local operators who won't have the budget or management systems to advertise alongside public behemoths.

And while this appears to be a sudden change, Google has been moving in this direction for some time. Over the last 36 months, they have added a number of elements for that have clearly been skewed for advertisers at the top of the SERPs. With the additions of Shopping ads, Adwords, Site Links, Call Extensions, Seller Ratings and a host of other top-friendly options, Google has given advertisers at the top of its SERPs more visual space, more clicks, and ultimately more customers.

Of course, that increase has come at the expense of its organic listings which were pushed lower on the page, and advertisers who appeared lower in the Adwords auctions.

Now, Google and Adwords have moved 100% in that direction. With only four meaningful positions at the top of the page, advertisers have to make a stark choice: effectively drop out of the paid search engine listings, or load up and compete for the top – even at costs that are sure to increase.

In some local categories, this will simply narrow the field on search results pages. The local plumber who has a strong Adwords campaign is in no danger of having a big national plumbing company entering the market and pushing them out of the SERP. There are no such big plumbing companies.

Instead, each vertical market will take the next 1-3 months to re-organize around Google's new 4-ad dynamic. Many, many, many local advertisers will simply abandon Adwords altogether. In this way, Google will be thinning its own massive herd.

The local plumber mentioned above is going to have to worry about his competitors choosing to instead compete at the top of the page alongside him. This will force the price of clicks at the top of the pages upwards – which one suspects could be the rationale for Google's change to begin with.

Recovering and Moving Forward
This change was an unusually well-kept secret inside Google. That this didn't leak earlier is pretty amazing by itself. Many Google account reps and managers were completely stunned by this change late last week, and expressed varying levels of disbelief because it had such an immediate impact on the work they do directly with advertisers.

That said, there is only moving forward. Those local advertisers who were already competing at the top of Google's pay-per-click auction are in good shape, and won't see much immediate difference. If anything, they will see gains in clicks, conversions and revenue.

But over the next quarter, advertisers across verticals are going to re-examine their budgets and their opportunities. Being at the top of the page may well be more expensive – but it could also still be profitable.

Via: http://streetfightmag.com/2016/02/29/making-sense-of-googles-changes-that-just-blew-up-online-ads-for-local-businesses/#respond