Comments on: What’s the ROI on SEO? Hint: SEO Experts Are Underpaid, Opportunity Abounds!

By: The Value of SEO and B2B « huh?

The Value of SEO and B2B « huh? — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 03:41:42 +0000

[...] Both of these guys did excellent posts on the value of SEO, SEOMoz -read here and SEOROI – read here. [...]

By: Team Reading List » (EMP) E-Marketing Performance

Team Reading List » (EMP) E-Marketing Performance — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 21:51:11 +0000

[...] What’s the ROI on SEO? (Hint: SEO Experts Are Underpaid, Opportunity Abounds !) [...]

By: Wrecking Local SEO 201 - Do External Links Cause Merged Reviews? | SEO ROI Services. Need an SEO Rockstar? Contact Us. Prices $3K-$10K/mo

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 03:40:49 +0000

[...] Note: I’m not claiming credit for the hypothesis – I believe that Mike Blumenthal said it somewhere only I can’t find where (it might also have been Mike Belasco or Andrew Shotland ?). If you know who’s behind the idea, do let me know in the comments. You’ll get a link like Antonio from Marketing de Busca earned. [...]

By: Gabriel Goldenberg

Gabriel Goldenberg — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 17:55:02 +0000

Tyler, I’m no PPC expert – best to ask people like David Szetela, Amy Konefal or Andrew Goodman.

Paul, that’s interesting data. I guess it depends on the measurement method. Thanks for sharing the link and your personal experience!

By: Paul Montwill

Paul Montwill — Fri, 30 May 2008 08:27:35 +0000

Gab, what about the article in NYTimes:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/10/business/media/10drill.html?_r=3&ref=business&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin? They say “The study found that paid listings had a slight edge over “organic,” or unpaid, search results: visitors who clicked on paid links were 17 percent more likely to buy something, and they spent about 18 percent more on each order.”

My experience in employment industry is similar. Paid traffic is around 10% better in terms of conversion, time on site and bounce rate.

By: Tyler Shears

Tyler Shears — Thu, 29 May 2008 13:37:16 +0000

Gab,

Very interesting numbers! Luckily we’re all organic and have built our entire revenue stream around it.

We’re moving into PPC but it’s so difficult to compete with the big guys in categories like mortgage, insurance, etc.

Do you have any experience or thoughts in trying to find the competitive edge against someone with the higher margin in PPC?

By: Gabriel Goldenberg

Gabriel Goldenberg — Thu, 22 May 2008 05:00:16 +0000

Ed, I look forward to seeing that completed.

António thanks for sharing. I’ve updated the post.

John – awesome work for you guys. You’re obviously real pros!

By: John

John — Wed, 21 May 2008 03:46:09 +0000

We’re using decently optimized campaigns for PPC. Organic conversion are WAY higher then our PPC conversion rates.

68% Organic and 32% PPC. Thats DOUBLE!

Industry is lead generation in Health Insurance.

By: António

António — Tue, 20 May 2008 06:07:07 +0000

“I’ve just spent an hour and can’t figure out the keywords to unlock the studies to “prove” this, but since it’s so commonly known, I’ll ask you to take my word for now.”

14%, according to Avinash, if this is what you are looking for:

beussery.com/blog/index.php/2008/02/google-average-number-of-words-per-query-have-increased/

By: ed

ed — Mon, 19 May 2008 21:35:41 +0000

“Ed, you’re right on the money! Besides that, I’m seeing some interesting things on your Black Hat Digest .”

Thanks! I’ll finish all 30 days eventually – I keep thinking of fun things to code and getting sidetracked. Since I’ve been handing it all though not many folks are complaining

By: Gabriel Goldenberg

Gabriel Goldenberg — Mon, 19 May 2008 21:11:25 +0000

Excellent point there James. However, if you take the case of some sites (I forget the specific example), they’ve seen success on search and online means and are now working to promote offline and build a brand. So for the smaller businesses, the money may go to search, but then that makes them enough to go back into offline media for the branding.

By: James

James — Mon, 19 May 2008 14:58:33 +0000

We generally don’t do PPC management that much but for the clients that we do it for there definitely seems to be a better ROI for organic SEO over PPC.

One of my smaller clients spends around the same amount per month on SEO as they do on PPC and PPC traffic generates approximately 10% of the total traffic while organic search engine traffic accounts for around 80% of the traffic, with the last 10% being referral/bookmark.

I don’t have access to what % of the traffic converted into sales at the moment but it is probably safe to assume the ROI on the SEO is better than that of the PPC.

The other interesting thing from the Sempo findings is that marketers are increasing the PPC/SEO budget by reducing print expenditure. Which is a pretty obvious course of action really but it is interesting how much they can save on marketing by doing this. We had another client that advertised in the national papers quite a lot, the adverts cost them thousands and by pulling just 2 of the adverts they managed to cover all the SEO and PPC costs. With the help of the SEO/PPC they managed to double the enquiries they received within a few months. So even though the ROI on PPC is less than SEO it is still considerably better than that of traditional media.

By: Gabriel Goldenberg

Gabriel Goldenberg — Mon, 19 May 2008 13:57:58 +0000

Rishi, that’s exactly what I’m talking about! Now imagine you took just another tenth of the PPC budget and put it into SEO – consider the ROI on that! Or even if they took it from some other area…

By: Rishil

Rishil — Mon, 19 May 2008 07:51:01 +0000

The funny thing is – I know PPC agencies take a share on spend – but most companies spend millions on PPC and only a fraction (I have heard of large cos spending 1/10 of PPC spend on SEO).

I can confirm Gab, for one large scale client, ROI on SEO is 5 times higher than PPC, while the spend is 1/7 SEO and the rest PPC. I also know of at least 3 other businesses that see almost the same situation.

By: Gabriel Goldenberg

Gabriel Goldenberg — Sun, 18 May 2008 16:30:57 +0000

Ed, you’re right on the money! Besides that, I’m seeing some interesting things on your Black Hat Digest .

By: ed

ed — Sun, 18 May 2008 16:19:40 +0000

I’ll have to agree with you there. We do a small amount of SEO work for others and it’s hard to justify the time spent sometimes.

Spending the same time optimizing and working on our sites usually works better for us in the long run.

Think of it this way…..

I can make 2k working for you for a few months (couple hours a week). Or I can make 4k to 10k a year working the same effort on a site of ours.