Doesn't Seo Cost Just As Much As PPC?

I know a lot about long term seo but I am the kinda guy that likes traffic free and quick. I prefer that over ppc any day. For things that will be around for years I will commit to long term seo and will do everything myself. I don't outsource any thing. But honestly in the world of internet marking, what is ever long term? One minute this is in the next that.

People tend to neglect the fact that money=time. So, in that point, you're correct that SEO (as with all "free" marketing) isn't "free".

What most people mean is that it's "no money out of pocket" or "sweat equity"... which there is nothing wrong with when you're starting out.

But if your end goal is to liberate yourself from your business, you need to systemize... and most of the time, the easiest way to do that without having to manage other people is paid advertising.


For me, I continue to supplement my paid advertising with "free" sources simply because I don't have the cashflow to spend. Once I do, I will slowly start to weed out the labor involved by cutting things like article writing, back-linking, etc. simply because if I wanted a job, I could go find a job far less mundane that paid me significantly higher than I get paid for writing articles and backlinking.


Most people don't boil it down to actual facts. They don't take the time to clock themselves and figure out just how many hours they spend doing certain tasks, and then divide those hours into the return on their TIME investment.

For the first year and a half I was doing this, I'd spend a solid 10 hours a day doing labor tasks... and I'd be lucky to walk at the end of the day with $50 in REVENUE (gross) per day.. that's less than $5.00/hour (minus taxes and expenses).

When I realized I could easily make more working at Starbucks, less hours, and have more freedom... that's when I changed my tune.

That's not to be said that there isn't a time period that you need to sacrifice making almost nothing in order to grow your company... but know for yourself what your time is worth and figure out a way to capitalize on that in the most efficient way possible.

It depends on what you are selling. but SEO is great for long term. PPC will work until you run your PPC campaign.

SEO is in my opinion much more time/money - consuming than PPC. I always recommend to do PPC first to see what keywords convert for you and THEN (yes, AFTER!!!) optimize your site for SEO and see if you can rank for those keywords that have converted with PPC. Otherwise, how would you know what converts?

A lot of 'ifs' in there....

Basically, if you don't do something for yourself, yes, it will cost you.

Also, at least for Adwords, you're increasingly needing to have the most of the same basic elements for PPC as you do for SEO, primarily hosting, domain and rich content.

Adwords is too expensive and too picky/risky to use for affiliate products these days, especially for direct linking. There probably are some new Adwords strategies out there that avoid the dread 'Google Slap' when dealing with affiliate products but people who're using them aren't talking too much. All I've seen being sold is the same old rehashed stuff from 5 years ago.

That said, I occasionally use Adwords for my own products when my budget allows.

Other paid traffic I haven't really tried.

As for SEO, I've been fairly successful with that. While I don't want to publish my exact cost figures in public, it isn't $100 a day or even $25 a day, which is my usual daily budget range on PPC. When I got started my daily cost was almost $0 since I used a lot of free resources like Blogger and Squidoo to bootstrap my business.

Overall, I think it's easy to get caught up in which method is best. What's best is what works best for you to make money. For me, it's been SEO but someone else may find PPC more effective for them.

I know that it cost my clients some money for me to do pure SEO - and it ain't cheap for them.

I see a lot of people do this - they buy subscriptions, they pay for IM products, they spend $$ on hosting, article blasters, out sourced content writers and then complain that PPC is too expensive.

PPC isn't expensive if you can crack the Quality Score hurdle in AdWords.

And PPC is easy to learn - great step by step instructions on youtube and the AdWords forum (free!).

a lot of mixed results here, its to expensive, its not expensive, its hard, its old rehashed, its easy and good info available. this is like playing solo twister on the net with my brain and it hurts.

I think this question illustrates very well that it is difficult to do an apples to apples comparison between the two.

For SEO, you front-load your time and effort on backlinking, article writing, etc etc etc. But once established, your funnels ostensibly produce without nearly the effort.

For PPC, the cost and sustainment needs are more constant without as much up-front hump. But you will never get to the pure sustainment level - you will always buy your advertising.

Plus you can argue which is more valuable - being No. 1 in the SERPS or No. 1 in Adwords.

An economic comparison like this calls for a net present value analysis and it seems that would be extremely complex for this.

I believe this is all about organic traffic. SEO will, in the long run, provide you with clicks free of charge. It will also lend credibility when your results appear naturally rather than as a paid for inclusion.

Doing a small PPC campaign first is a good idea to see what converts because you may be surprised. Overall, SEO is the way to go. Free traffic is way better, but takes more time to achieve.

It's free in the sense that you don't pay directly for the click. But there are other costs to consider.

Most of us put a dollar value on our time. What's the value you put on your time? In that sense, the clicks from natural results are not really free. Mr2Monster said it best: no money out of pocket, sweat equity. But in the end, there is a cost.

To answer the question, taking all factors into account, SEO can cost more than PPC. Simple calculation really. Take your time value (say $50 per hour) multiply by hours put in. At the end of the day, how many clicks did your get? Divide costs by clicks and you get a CPC. Keep doing the calculation over time. The CPC may go up and down. Compare to what PPC would cost per click.

I don't think SEO should be hands off as Daniel above suggests. So as you adjust, your cost will go up and come back down as you get clicks.

That calculation should really be done as a cost per sale.

SEO is the way to go for the long term. The number of hits you get from the top three positions is crazy compared to PPC. Because of the expense of PPC today, you are lucky to get a 100% return on your money. SEO takes a few months to dominate but the ROI in the long term is astronomical compared to PPC.
That's my experience for what it is worth.

Peter

No, if you know the trick.

SEO is free