I’ve found that for many companies, being in both positions not only brings in more traffic, but also leads to a higher combined conversion rate.

Add display to the mix, and often the display does not get many clicks but further increases search CTR and conversion rate. If you do not measure the changes in search patterns while buying display – you are missing the real metrics.

You should also track your branded terms. If you create a brand, and start to lose clicks to competitors who are buying your terms on PPC – do the math to see if it’s worth buying the clicks. It’s not a black and white answer – it’s some math.

RN

Some of the things you could tell your clients to convince them to invest in PPC before investing in SEO are:

That SEO can take some time to get going while PPC is much more immediate.

Also PPC as Gab points out, will allow you to discover top performing keywords with conversion data that you can then use to refine your SEO strategy. This alone will save your clients time any money by eliminating a lot of guesswork.

You could also mention that PPC is very flexible in that they control the budget and exposure. They can target part of their intended market for testing purposes and expand as data comes in and performance increases.

Your clients can also control the message and rapidly push out promotions in PPC text ads where SEO is not as responsive.

Another good point is that PPC will help them protect their brands from competitors who may already be bidding on their brand names using PPC, thus stealing some of their traffic and clients.

These points should help convince your clients that investing PPC especially before a full blown SEO strategy is implemented is worth the effort and investment.

You can adapt my seo roi projection technique to show what money they’re leaving on the table.

Also, I’ve heard from others that proposing it as a small budget initially would be an easy way to get buy-in. When that works, you can get a bigger budget.

Great post. I would add that PPC tends to complement SEO listings so while there might be some canibalization, more often there is incremental traffic to be had. That said, the either or argument is hard to justify in most cases.

In a combined strategy an advertiser’s visibility increases and so does overall ROI. I would recommend that advertisers analyze their SEO and PPC traffic on the same keywords and measure the ROI on each to gage the true value of each tactic.
Ex. What is the ROI from SEO and PPC on the keyword “Beverly Hills Ferrari Dealer” if you rank well on both PPC and SEO for this keywords?

Using this evaluation method, advertisers will get a better idea of whether it’s worth investing in PPC. It’s worth noting that if the ROI on PPC or SEO is lower than the other it could be because there is an opportunity to improve the performance there. Just the same, over a number of keywords compared a clearer picture of performance should reveal itself.

Analytics is definitely your friend here because like you`re pointing out ROI is more important than simple ranking when it comes to profits.

If you can make your PPC campaign turn a positive ROI you’d be crazy not to run it or to limit your budget in any way. When you get PPC right (particularly in ecommerce) its a licence to print money. The problem is most advertisers don’t get it right and don’t know what they’re real ROI is!