Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Google AdWords vs. Free Search Engine Rankings

Isyaias,

   A lot of people ask me about the merits of buying clicks on
search engines with AdWords, vs. getting free visitors with
what's called "search engine optimization" - loading up your web
pages with strategic keywords so you can get ranked #10 or
#3 or #1 on Google's free search.

   Well at first glance free is certainly better than paid, but
there are some big IF's that you need to consider first!

   Remember: you can only optimize a website for maybe ten
words and phrases - not hundreds - so you should choose
very, very carefully.

   But the most important thing is choosing the RIGHT
words and phrases to optimize for. 

   Now here's the kicker:

   If you don't use a pay per click strategy to determine which
words and phrases actually attract paying customers first, you will
almost always choose the wrong keywords.  The words you
initially think you want are almost always different than the ones
that actually work - believe me, I've made that mistake many
times.

   Considering it takes 30 days to several months to see
results when you're playing the search engine optimization
game, you CANNOT afford to target the wrong keywords.

   When you do pay per click campaigns properly, you'll
see that there are almost always a few really productive words
and phrases that only 2-3 people are bidding on, instead
of 10 or 20 bidders.  What that means is that those people are
not optimizing their websites for those same keywords either.

   Well just like pay per click, search engine phrases have
varying degrees of competitiveness.  If you want a #1
ranking for the phrase "Digital Camera" it's going to be
a LOT harder than getting a #1 ranking for "Kodak DX6340"
which is a popular digital camera.  And the traffic will be
much more targeted, too.  When you do search engine
optimization, you must pick battles you can win.

   So here's the lesson: Use my Definitive Guide to Google
AdWords to properly set up a pay per click campaign,
determine which keywords are productive, THEN do
search engine optimization based on what really works.
Then you'll get all kinds of free traffic and even more
income from your website:

http://perrymarshall.com/adwords

Recommended tools for Keyword research:
http://perrymarshall.com/google/tools.htm

Best,

Perry Marshall

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