Advertising on the Content Network vs. Search Network

In the last few years Google AdWords has gotten increasingly popular. One of the biggest reasons for this surge in popularity is the wide reach AdWords can help companies achieve. The extensive network of Google-related sites and the lack of a minimum ad spend makes it so that even companies with the most minimal ad budget can advertise online with AdWords and know that their ads can be seen by thousands overnight.

When setting up an ad campaign with Google AdWords one important decision that you will need to make is whether to advertise on the Content Network, the Search Network, or both. Google’s Content Network places ads on sites based on the content of the sites and how well it aligns with your ad. The Search Network places ads on Search Engines where potential customers are looking for information and products.

AdWords Learning Center

Content Network
When an advertiser utilizes the Content Network the ad he/she creates will be placed on sites that have similar themes to the keywords that are chosen for that ad. So for instance say you are using “gourmet coffee beans” as a keyword, using the Content Network your ad will be featured on coffee review sites, sites selling coffee makers, and perhaps coffeehouse blogs. With your ad on these related sites you can choose to pay each time that ad is clicked on, or each time it appears for someone to see. Content Network advertising is mostly used to create brand awareness. The thought behind this style of advertising is that when someone is searching for a coffeemaker and sees your ad they may or may not click on it, but due to the brand loyalty that can developed with a well structured ad, perhaps after they order their coffee maker they will need some coffee beans and go to your site.

Search Network
When an advertiser utilizes the Search Network the ad he/she creates will be placed on Google search engines and when a customer types in a keyword you are using your ad will be pulled up on the right-hand side or top area of the search results page. In the same example from above, when a potential customer goes on Google and types in “gourmet coffee beans” your ad can appear. Customers then click on the ad and are taken to your site where they can find the item or items they are seeking. With the Search Network you only pay each time you ad is clicked, not each time it appears. The benefit to this style of advertising is that you find the consumer at the very moment they intend to purchase “gourmet coffee beans.”

Criticisms
The question of advertising on the Content Network versus the Search Network is a divisive one.

Criticizers of the Content Network say that while it can reach more people the traffic it creates is not qualified in any way. Based on our coffee example, a click on your ad on the Content Network may be a person who, after searching for a coffee maker, is interested in seeing how much the coffee beans will run them if they buy the maker, thereby helping them make a decision on the coffee maker purchase. Or perhaps someone clicks on your ad after seeing that their local coffee house has started offering a new blend and wants to see if you have any customers who reviewed that product so they can decide if it is worth it to go down to the coffee shop and try it.  Additionally, if an internet user is trying to find song lyrics that contain the phrase “coffee beans” or a movie with “coffee” in the title or even a celebrity with the last name “Bean” your ad may appear even though it is of no use to the searcher. While Google offers the ability to filter out sites that you do not think are relevant on the content network, it can tend to get tedious and is a hassle for the more general keywords.

On the other hand, criticizers of the Search Network say that many times consumers go online to search engines to do a lot of research before buying and you could just be throwing your money away if you are paying every time someone comparison shops from site to site looking for low priced gourmet coffee beans.

Picking A Direction
Some advertisers split their budget between the Search Network and the Content Network, whereas others just stick to one approach. When deciding what is best for your business you should decide on the goals you hope to accomplish with your online advertising and then pick your approach from there. Keep in mind that if you try one approach and do not get the results you were hoping for, there is enough flexibility in the AdWords system to change your approach at any time.

More marketing help!

-Kate Pierce eCommerce Specialist

Direct Mail / Printing

OvernightPrints.com
When you need printing fast, easy, low-priced delivered to your door… we use OvernightPrints.com

Domain | Web Hosting | SEO

Heavy Guerrilla offers complete web hosting, domain name, and search engine optimization products.

Internet Advertising

Google AdWords & Yahoo Search – We will work with you to create and manage a campaign that drives relevant, motivated prospects.

LocalAdLink – Local Web Advertising The most affordable way to be seen on the internet. LocalAdLink pushes your website out to all the major search engines, and social media sites for your local area.

Email Marketing

Constant Contact – The most affordable way to manage your email marketing. Send out preformatted marketing messages to your email database with one click. Contact our office and we’ll get you set up!

Did you know that if you don’t have a clearly defined, written marketing plan… you are wasting money?

For the most part your business runs very well.  You attract clients and provide a product or service as promised.  What you may not know is that your business as well as any company must have a well defined, written marketing plan.  Without one, you are constantly searching for the “marketing gimmick of the month”.  This not only confuses your target market, but also wastes an enormous amount of money.  I see this approach every single day, but the good news is that your competition is probably utilizing this method also.  Now’s your chance to capitalize on their weakness.

Maybe it seems like too much work, but our experience tells us that your marketing plan (foundation) should be what drives everything you do going forward.
A company or new product launch without a marketing plan and associated strategy is like building a house with no foundation.  Sure, you could frame the wooden structure directly on dirt, but throughout the entire building process you will be constantly trying and guessing how to make everything level and square.  Build a strong, level foundation and the rest of the process is easy.

Marketing is very much the same way.  Almost 80% of all businesses do not have a marketing plan which is the solid, level foundation from which to build your business.  They know they need to generate customers, but yet they continually try different strategies, different advertising methods, public relations, etc. etc.  Each week they try something different, each week their marketing efforts have a different message.  Their advertising doesn’t follow tried and true graphic design layouts.  They have their brother-in-law’s kid slap together a web site.  Their web site looks like a 2nd grader put it together… their print ads looking nothing like their web site, their business cards or anything else they have.  Oh sure, they are spending lots of money but they are not getting results.  No consistency in look, message, or product offering.  Most importantly, they have no idea who their ideal client is, and/or what to say if they did know who it was.

The companies that DO have a marketing plan?  The companies that DO know who their “Ideal Client” is?  Well you know who those companies are.  They are the ones that typically “rule-the-roost”!  They are the companies that everyone wants to work for and many times have secured the “lions-share” of the market that you compete in.

Tell your advertising salesperson “Thanks, but no thanks”!

You as well as most companies are bombarded by advertising sales people… right?  Everything from promotional products like pens, key-fobs and calendars to yellow page ads, newspaper ads, and direct-mail.  Lately there is a new breed of salespeople promising you first page listings on Google, Yahoo, and BING.  Ask yourself, “If I do purchase advertising from one of these vendors, What am I going to say in the ad?”  Most likely, the ad salesperson will come up with some slick slogan, headline, or some ad copy they put together and rush it to press so they can get their commission.  What do they know about your business?  What is your target market?  What is your remarkable difference that will compel new customers to flock to your front door?  If any advertising salesperson doesn’t ask you up front, “Do you have a marketing plan & strategy?”, then they are probably only interested in making a commission.  Never put the “Cart Before the Horse”!  And never buy advertising without your road map, your foundation, your marketing plan.

Our fee typically pays for itself.

Heavy Guerrilla not only brings value to your entire company, we typically pay for our services in the first 12 months.  How you may ask?  We are one of the Northwest’s few true marketing and advertising agencies.  We get at the root of your marketing problems and work with you to generate real, foundational strategies that not only have longevity, but truly differentiate your company from the competition!  We’re not driven to sell you advertising just to make a commission, we’re driven by ROI.

While the underlying foundation of our strategies utilize long held, tried and true marketing methods, we also incorporate unconventional tactics to drive new sales, create excitement, and manage your entire marketing process.

When people hear about online marketing, they often think of two of the more popular methods that a company can use to enhance its visibility on the Web: organic search engine optimization and pay-per-click advertising.

In an ideal world, you would use both strategically to maximize your site’s profile. However, budgetary constraints often make this impossible, and trying to do both on a limited budget or with minimal resources can result in neither campaign producing ideal results. In this case, it’s usually better to focus on one or the other. But which is best for you?

Organic Search Engine Optimization

Organic search engine optimization campaigns offer several distinct advantages over pay-per-click advertising campaigns, as many recent studies have shown. What follows is a brief listing of some of the findings.

Propensity to Click

Study after study indicates people are less likely to click on paid search ads rather than on results from organic search engine optimization. For example, one study found that search users are up to six times more likely to click on the first few organic results than they are to choose any of the paid results[1], while an eye tracking study[2] showed that 50 percent of users begin their search by scanning the top organic results. Other studies have shown that only 30 percent of search engine users click on paid listings, leaving an overwhelming 70 percent who are clicking the organic listings.[3] And a 2003 study found that 85 percent of searchers report clicking on paid links in less than 40 percent of all of their searches, and 78 percent of all respondents claim that they found the information they we searching for through sponsored links just 40 percent of the time.[4]

Trust

Studies are beginning to indicate that the trust level for organic results is much higher than that of paid results, and that paid results are looked upon as a nuisance by some searchers. One study found that only 14 percent of searchers trust paid listings, and 29 percent report being “annoyed” by them.[5] Another study found that 66 percent of customers distrust paid ads.[6] Clearly, it’s not generally a good idea to upset potential customers before they even click on your link.

Value of Visitors

Organic search engine results tend to be seen as non-biased, and they therefore are able to provide visitors that are more valuable. The overall conversion rate, or the rate at which searchers take a desired action on a site, is 17 percent higher for unpaid search results than the rate for paid (4.2% vs. 3.6%).[7] Trends also have shown that more of the sales that result from search engines originated in organic search listings.[8]

Visitors Becoming More Aware of Pay-Per-Click as Advertising

As more and more people turn to the Internet for research and information, more searchers are becoming aware of paid results as a marketing tool. One study showed that not only are 38 percent of searchers aware of the distinction between paid and unpaid results, 54 percent are aware of the distinction on Google, which is widely recognized as the most popular search engine.[9]

Pay-Per-Click Costs Rising

Meanwhile, pay-per-click costs are rising steadily. Between October 2004 and December 2005, average keyword prices rose from around $25 to just under $55.[10] And the cost of keywords can increase by as much as 100 percent during the holiday season.[11] These costs aren’t going unnoticed either; one study of problems experienced by U.S. companies found that 57 percent of respondents felt that their desired keywords were “too expensive,” while 51 percent expressed concern that they are overpaying for certain keywords.[12] On the other hand, when you outsource to an organic search engine optimization firm, your costs will likely remain more stable than the prices for pay-per-click advertising.

Long Term Results

While a pay-per-click campaign may produce results more quickly than an organic search engine optimization campaign, organic search engine optimization campaigns can give you results that last. When the budget runs out for a pay-per-click campaign, or when your company decides that the pay-per-click campaign should be terminated, the results end as well. With organic search engine optimization, the optimized site content and other changes made to your site can have an impact on your search results until the next change in a search engine’s algorithm, or possibly even beyond.

Relevance

Users also have rated organic search engine results as more relevant than paid results. On Google, 72.3 percent felt that organic results were more relevant, while only 27.7 percent rated paid results as more relevant. Yahoo offered similar results, with 60.8 calling organic results relevant compared to only 39.2 percent for paid.[13]

Pay-Per-Click

While the above statistics may make organic search engine optimization seem the clear choice in all cases, in certain situations it actually can make more sense to do pay-per-click advertising. For those looking for fast results on a small budget, a pay-per-click campaign may be the answer.

Results

As previously stated, the results from pay-per-click advertising are immediate. On the other hand, an organic search engine optimization campaign may take up to three months or more for results to be apparent. In this case, pay-per-click is advantageous for those who are looking to promote an initiative that will go live in a short amount of time, or whose business is seasonal in nature and who only do promotion during certain months of the year.

Budget

Small businesses with extremely tight budgets may find that pay-per-click is a better investment than organic search engine optimization because a pay-per-click campaign will almost always cost less – good search engine optimization companies simply do not work for $100 per month. By limiting a campaign’s keyphrases to highly specific terms relevant to a company’s business, there will not be a large amount of traffic generated, but the traffic that is generated will be specific to the desired result. Plus, choosing such specific phrases can make them less expensive on a per click basis. Moreover, in niche markets with a high average dollar sale, where there’s not a great amount of search activity because the prospect pool is limited, it may not make sense to engage a quality organic search engine optimization firm at several thousand dollars per month when you can instead buy varying niche-specific keyphrases and generate traffic in that way.

Easier to Handle In-House

Non-complicated pay-per-click campaigns can be handled much more easily in-house than an organic search engine optimization campaign. Such campaigns generally involve business to business and high-end, service oriented companies, not those geared toward a large consumer base. Since organic search engine optimization requires a steep learning curve and since there are so many questionable tactics that can put a site at risk of penalization (the tactics that neophytes to search engine optimization are likely to use), it may make more sense to run a pay-per-click campaign. Since you are dealing directly with the engine, i.e., Yahoo Search Marketing and Google AdWords, you don’t need to pay a middleman, and these sites offer helpful tutorials on how to use pay-per-click marketing. Perhaps most importantly, the concept of pay-per-click is much easier to grasp and understand at the outset.

No Contracts

Most organic search engine optimization campaigns require a contract of a certain length because SEO companies know that meaningful results will rarely happen overnight. When dealing with an in-house pay-per-click campaign, obviously a contract is not an issue. But in general, even when you are dealing with an agency, you will not tend to need to sign a contract because the agency instead makes money on a percentage of the spend, although there may be a setup fee. Without a contract, you are free to reallocate marketing dollars elsewhere if you discover that the pay-per-click campaign is not providing the desired results.

Conclusion

Clearly, organic search engine optimization has some distinct advantages over pay-per-click advertising. However, there are undoubtedly certain situations and scenarios where pay-per-click advertising makes more sense fiscally and strategically. With a high enough budget, you would be able to have an effective organic search engine optimization campaign running in tandem with an effective pay-per-click campaign. But if you have to choose one, look into your unique situation before you decide.

By Michael Fleischner | Marketing Expert, Internet Marketing Secrets*

If you’re like many people in today’s economy you may be thinking about starting your own business. Any new business needs a website and websites are only good if others can find them. All new website owners quickly find a need to focus on the search ranking of their website in all major search engines. Search ranking is the organic placement of your site, also referred to as ranking, on Google or some other search engine.

The challenge for all website owners is learning the key factors for improving search ranking. Getting to the top of search engine result is rather complex and requires more than just a quick study. In fact, website owners will spend more than a billion dollars on search engine optimization this year and much more of that on other forms of Internet marketing like pay-per-click.

You can pay for traffic or you can focus on improving search ranking across all major search engines. Here are a few search ranking strategies you can apply to your website to improve traffic and build your business for the long term.

Build your website with sound search engine optimization techniques. Start your search engine optimization from day one. Don’t wait until you’ve invested tons of money into your website before you find out that it hasn’t been built for effective search ranking. Apply on page techniques like meta tags, headers, and keyword density to improve search ranking.

Construct a search engine optimization plan. Don’t assume that because you build a website you are going to have top a top search ranking. It takes a website that is built on sound principles as well as a significant effort in off-page optimization. Off page optimization is the process of building links to your website from third part websites. The higher the Google PR of these sites, the better your search ranking will be. Be sure to include your keywords in the actual link text.

Make search ranking improvement an ongoing focus. Leaving your search engine ranking to chance is not a good strategy. You must focus on SEO if you are going to make progress and ultimately dominate search ranking for you website. Follow your plan and work that plan until you are in the number one position. Once you’ve achieved your desired outcome, put a maintenance plan into place so that you hold and retain that position over the long term.

Achieving top search ranking is no laughing matter. Those sites listed in the top 2 – 3 positions get the major of traffic. If you’re site isn’t there, you’re not growing your business as large or as profitably as you can. So don’t settle for anything less than search ranking dominance.

Begin from where you are. Achieving rankings that you can be proud of does take work, persistence and confidence. Do the right things and you will get to where you need to be.

Are looking to improve the search ranking of your website? Learn more about The Webmaster’s Book of Secrets and download your FREE search engine optimization lessons to instantly improve search ranking!