I don't see how Traffic Geyser Firepower provides any ROI to the small businesses they're supposed to serve. The example in the video presentation suggests to begin by googling a keyword phrase like:

"san diego chiropractor"

where there are multiple PPC advertisers and lots of competing websites

Then, to drill down into a subniche like:

"san diego spinal decompression"

where there are less competing sites and there are still advertisers.

By creating an animoto video and blasting it out with Traffic Geyser, you can get a 1st page google position within a couple days.

This is supposed to impress the local chiropractor that's currently spending money on PPC, and supposedly they'll want to spend $1,000+ each month to hire you on retainer to keep him on the front page.

But, I have to ask:

How many searches are there each month on this local long-tail phrase? Google's External Keyword tools says there are less than 100/month on "denver spinal decompression" in phrase or exact match, and 260 in broad match.

Out of the very few searches, how many clicks would we expect? Googling the video examples in the presentation shows that only 1-5 clicks are being produced on each of the videos.

If a small business was only going to get 1-5 clicks for the $1,000+ investment in our video SEO services, why wouldn't they be better served to simply continue with their PPC approach?

The Traffic Geyser Firepower video SEO approach looks like it provides clicks at $200+ each.

Why would a small business give up their PPC expenses in favor of $200+ clicks?

I would love it if the value proposition that Traffic Geyser is suggesting was true, but I don't see how it works in niches where there is such a small amount of searches.

Traffic Geyser suggests that if you buy their program, you can get $3,500 to $4,500 in up front fees from clients and $1,200 to $3,000 in monthly fees to continue the service.

For a couple of clicks each month?

What am I missing?

I think the value proposition that was suggested in the TG video was: "Mr. Business Owner, just think you won't have to pay PPC costs, when you have these great first page Google results."

I'm really just checking if my understanding is correct. They'll likely get only a couple of clicks for their monthly investment of $1,000+

I think they would be better served to stick with their PPC campaign and only pay for the few clicks they'd get (even if they were a couple bucks each.)

I hope someone can explain to me where my understand is wrong.

But the model suggested in the TG Firepower looks like you're selling a SEO service to local business owners who are unaware they will not achieve any positive ROI.

You are taking advantage of their lack of knowledge.

They'll pay $1,000+/month to have a video sit on the front page of Google (for a couple days) based on a search phrase that hardly anyone searches for and even fewer people click.

SEO works much better when you have a niche where there are a lot of searches across a large geographic area (like the world, or the US). However, when the niche is limited to a local geography (the name of a city), you end up with a very small amount of searches, and even fewer clicks.

Just how many calls do you think a business would get for their $1,200-$2,600 per month in recurring fees as suggested in the TG presentation?

What would the net cost per call be for the small business? It would likely be measured in the hundreds of dollars per call.

Would that make good business sense for them, when they could achieve the same thing by using geotargeted PPC for 1/10th or 1/20th the expense?

Please tell me where I'm wrong in this analysis.

Matt,

Thanks for the comments. Yes, the lifetime value of lead is a very important consideration.

However, the issue that hurts a local business relying on SEO for promotion is something completely different.

Using your example, type the following phrase into Google:

San Diego custom home builder

What do you see above the fold? Fourteen companies that can provide this service. You immediately see the 14 custom home builders in the area who've chosen to put their business in the local search (FREE), and in the paid search results.

Where are the custom home builders who rely on SEO for promotion? They aren't even seen. They are down the page, below the fold.

Who do you think will get the greatest number of visitors to their site? Those above the fold or those down the page? By far, those above the fold will get the majority of the traffic. Those below the fold will get trickles.

Next, who is paying more for their position on the page? It's actually the companies that are hiring SEO consultants and they are ending up below the fold. In the presentation, it's suggested that they should pay a few thousand dollars to start and $1,200 to $2,600 each month.

However, 8 of the competitors are at the top of the page by using the Free Local Search, and other 6 are using Paid search for only about $2.50/ click to be in positions 1-3.

Does that mean that using PPC is going to be more expensive than the cost of hiring an SEO consultant.

No, not by far.

Since there are only a few hundred searches on the phrase "san diego custom home builder" each month, and you would only get a portion of them, your total bill would be just a couple hundred dollars, instead of the $1,200 to $2,600 an SEO person would be charging.

Let me ask a few questions.

If you ran the custom home building company, where would you like your ad? At the top or bottom of the page?

The smartest place to be is at the top of the page and to pay the least amount of money to be there. Neither of these objectives can be produced with SEO.

SEO works great for products and services that area sold into large geographic areas, where Google doesn't freely insert it's local search results with a nice Google map.

It's not the fault of Traffic Geyser, Article Marketing, SENuke, or any other SEO method.

It's just fundamentally easier and more significantly cost effective for a local business to get traffic by using free local search and geo-targeted PPC.

All the fancy SEO in the world won't get you to the top of the page on these local searches. You'll be left jockying for position way down below the fold, which is much less desirable and much more expensive.

It's not that SEO is bad. It works great on most product and services that are not geographically limited.

But for local businesses, it is much less effective and costs a lot more than it needs to.

MRSP,

You bring up many valid points, and from your posts I can tell that you know the local search market quite well.

It will be interesting to see if anyone that has purchased the TG FirePower training makes a sustainable, long term income from this model.

Yes, one could go through this training, sell the service to local, high end clients that could afford the proposed initial setup and monthly fees, but if the client starts looking at their ROI after a few months of paying for this "SEO" service, I think they will be pretty disappointed, especially if they have run PPC campaigns and know their ROI there.

Most high end local businesses, i.e.; chiropractors, dentists, licensed contractors, etc., already have experience marketing online, either through a consultant, or by doing it themselves. They are not going to be fooled by this type of high priced, low result service for too long.

The example showing the Kodak zi8 Camera Review is pretty much irrelevant. People are here to ask valid questions about TG FirePower and the results that they can achieve for local businesses. If TG wanted to really show proof of their system at work, they most likely have the staff, and certainly have the tools, to create real time results in a real time local business market without revealing their most "profitable niches".

TG would have been better off not posting an example in this thread at all than to post something in a completely different International Market that has NO relation to local business SEO and search.


Best Regards,
~

P.S. I speak from experience here as I have been doing local business consulting, SEO and SEM probably long before TG FirePower was even a twinkle in the product creator's eye.

I haven't tried Traffic Geyer Firepower, and based on the hype factor in their videos I don't intend to.

I do want to say that local organic traffic converts really well. It is much more valuable than national SEO traffic and performs on a different scale. If market samaurai is telling you that there are 5 searches a day for a niche keyword, no SEO in their right mind would put any effort to rank in that keyword. But locally, that traffic means $$.

If I'm looking for a kodak digital camera on Google, I may buy one in the next 3-6 months from somewhere. If I search for "Santa Monica, CA Emergency Plumber" I am going to pay $340 within the next 2 hours to the first person I find on the serps that appears credible.

TRUE. Google local cannibalizes search SEO traffic. So- get your clients there too! Its easy to optimize an LBC listing, build citations, and tell your client to get some reviews. Package that with a video and coupon campaign and you've got a great lead gen system for your customer.

Local PPC does perform great, and Google will be monetizing local more and more and more- but it will never be incredibly profitable as it only adds value to those who jump on it early. There will always be some idiot competitor who bids way high and blows it for everybody (except for Google).

SEO has more branding impact than PPC- it offers a superior level of credibility to have a site at the top of the organic search results. Having that kind of authority makes traffic convert better and clients happier.

I know this from the Yellow Pages industry- the largest ads don't necessarily generate the most calls. Smart consumers know that they don't want to pay for the most audacious marketer, their rates will have to be higher. The mid sized ads always performed best in several niches. So too does SEO traffic have more credibility and less of a perceived cost from a consumer perspective (even though it may be WAY more expensive per click than PPC).

The real challenge with offline is getting your clients to be good at converting their leads. You wouldn't send tons of traffic to a poorly written sales letter- but some clients just have plain ugly web sites and no phone skills. If you call up their main line and get somebody saying "Hello?" you know they won't be very successful no matter how much traffic you send them.

Not sure if this is how it works or not, but what if the #'s from the Google KW tool aren't telling the whole story.

For instance, if you type in "Colorado spinal decompression," your traffic estimates might look poor. But not everyone in Colorado types that... they might just type in "spinal decompression" and get local traffic that is optimized for Colorado spinal decompression because Google wants to serve it's customers relevant sites. I'm not sure, but if Google doesn't include these numbers in the search count, than it might make the # of searches better. Good enough to charge that kind of $ per month? You would have to do your own tracking to figure that out.

Also, you have to figure out the traffic you get from other sources... Yahoo, Bing, youtube, etc. Does it all add up to something worth while? Do all the other services done by the SEM company make it worth while... testing conversion rates at all levels of the sales funnel and making changes, running the autoresponder/direct mail follow up, continued backlink strategies, etc.

Another issue is time. Most companies that are better to work with have a high earning/hour. The cost of lost time working their marketing migh tip the scales towards outsourcing it. If they've spent the time and have the know how, they could get cheap labor overseas. Having "done for me" services deserve an upcharge.

All that being said, wow that looks expensive. I don't know all the details (which makes my opinion close to worthless), but it's enough to make me explore other options.

-Joe