Sports site demonstrates the value of SEO vs. PPC
We have discussions with a lot of clients and potential clients who wonder why they should invest in SEO (search engine optimization), which generally provides for no guarantees of success in ranking a web site, vs. the “sure thing” of PPC (pay-per-click) advertising on the search engines.The simple answer is that if you allow your SEO firm to do everything they recommend, search engine optimization is highly successful and will generate results for you a long time, possibly years, without having to shell out nearly the amount that you would for PPC.
PPC lasts only as long as you are willing to pay for the ads, and generally speaking, can be quite costly for terms that are highly competitive.
But, let me give you a real-life example based on a site we are currently working on.
We designed, built and optimized a new high school sports site serving two counties in Ohio – www.sportsink.com. The site launched Aug. 24, 2009, the same day as the start of Ohio’s high school football season.
Pilot Fish was given free reign (with a budget) to promote the site in order to generate site traffic. We focused primarily on SEO, but knowing that this company expected fast growth and that SEO can take some time to develop, two weeks after the site was launched we engaged in a month-long PPC campaign on Facebook to target the high school market.
During the one-month period that SportsInk advertised with Facebook, they spent $5,000 on ads, plus a PPC management fee of $1,500. The site generated 1,234 visitors from Facebook click-thrus.
By contrast, during that same month, the site generated 1,723 visitors from visitors finding the site through Google, which cost nothing except the initial site build. SportsInk discontinued the Facebook campaign, and continued with Pilot Fish’s Sustained Success program to increase the number of inbound links to the site.
As of December, the site has been generating more than 3,500 visitors per month from the natural results in Google. To achieve that volume of traffic for Facebook, the company would have had to spend $14,175 in pay-per-click fees per month. Instead, they spent a little less than $2,000 per month for continuing SEO services, and have hit more than 10,000 visitors per month and over 50,000 page views per month.
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