My website (focusing on term life mostly) is about to launch. I'm using lead gen companies now and looking to generate my own leads. Am I better of starting with PPC, generate a profit and then start with SEO in 3 months or so,(blogging, guest blogging, link building etc) or should I just take it slow, focus on targeting keywords to build organic traffic. I am outsourcing the work so the question is would my budget be better spent on ppc management or seo initially?
Starting Out: SEO VS PPC
- Thread starter lhkorn99
- Start date
- 11,995
It's unlikely anyone is going to be able to give you a definitive answer on something so subjective.
PPC is like crack (or so I've heard), it's great when you're doing it but once it's gone it's gone. If you're looking to get people to your site right away you can't beat it. For that same reason there are many others with large budgets willing to really dig in and make things happen. They have invested thousands and thousands of dollars into their sites working with what converts the bet and what doesn't. They've fixed up their system so that they know how to funnel the leads and maximize the sales and by default, maximizing their ROI. That's what you're competing with. On a few local search terms you can probably get some action to your site, but odds are PPC is going to cost you more to figure out than your threshold for pain.
By contrast, SEO is a long game. I've invested a small fortune in two things over the last six months, launching my dialer service, and SEO efforts. As a direct result of those SEO efforts I've seen an increase in the amount of leads I'm getting as well as the quality of the leads. My ROI on SEO is pretty good because it's a gift that keeps on giving. Unfortunately, it can be tough to rank for any meaningful terms and even if you do, it might not lead to the amount of activity and sales you'd like.
Back to the PPC, almost anyone can get ok traffic to their site using PPC. With SEO, you can just as easily spend hours and days and weeks and months working on a site to not get it to do anything you want it to, especially in something as competitive as insurance.
Clear as mud?
PPC is like crack (or so I've heard), it's great when you're doing it but once it's gone it's gone. If you're looking to get people to your site right away you can't beat it. For that same reason there are many others with large budgets willing to really dig in and make things happen. They have invested thousands and thousands of dollars into their sites working with what converts the bet and what doesn't. They've fixed up their system so that they know how to funnel the leads and maximize the sales and by default, maximizing their ROI. That's what you're competing with. On a few local search terms you can probably get some action to your site, but odds are PPC is going to cost you more to figure out than your threshold for pain.
By contrast, SEO is a long game. I've invested a small fortune in two things over the last six months, launching my dialer service, and SEO efforts. As a direct result of those SEO efforts I've seen an increase in the amount of leads I'm getting as well as the quality of the leads. My ROI on SEO is pretty good because it's a gift that keeps on giving. Unfortunately, it can be tough to rank for any meaningful terms and even if you do, it might not lead to the amount of activity and sales you'd like.
Back to the PPC, almost anyone can get ok traffic to their site using PPC. With SEO, you can just as easily spend hours and days and weeks and months working on a site to not get it to do anything you want it to, especially in something as competitive as insurance.
Clear as mud?
- Thread starter
- #3
Is your seo for your dialer or insurance lead gen?
- 11,995
None for the dialer. I do some for folks with insurance lead generation. I'm certainly not a master authority on the subject, but I'm not really priced that way either. Frankly I make much more off doing SEO for myself than I do for any of the clients I have on it.
Based on earlier discussions it sounded like you had your SEO plan all worked out?
- Thread starter
- #5
I have a plan for SEO, but I started reading Perry Marshall's book, and he recommends starting with PPC first, im just debating if I want to spend money on both or start with ppc first.
- 11,995
- Thread starter
- #8
Thanks dot com. thats a good point.
No problem. Now, I'm not suggesting to eliminate PPC from your plan, but SEO should be the basis for web traffic, especially since organic web traffic is virtually free.
DreamOfGenie
New Member
- 8
PPC should be viewed as a short-term strategy. You can use it to get targeted traffic to your site, but you need to be aware of where you're directing that traffic to. If you have your PPC campaigns sending that traffic to the homepage of your website, you're most likely going to see a high bounce rate and a low traffic-to-lead conversion (often less than 1%). I suggest running a test campaign with a low budget to determine which keywords/key-phrases will generate you more traffic within your set budget; also you can track the traffic that comes to your site to see how long they stay there, what pages they navigate to, what pages they exit your site from, etc. This will help you understand how your target audience relates to your site and if you need to make any adjustments to lower your bounce rate and increase your conversion rate before spending more money and launching a full campaign.
SEO is a more complex, long-term strategy. You need valuable content on your website (valuable to the reader/consumer), as well as effective title tags -- meta tags are not as important as they used to be due to people using them to try and manipulate the system. You'll also want to scatter links to other pages on your site throughout the content in a way that would make sense to -- and benefit -- the reader (i.e. don't just have lists of links to your other pages). If you have pictures on your site, make sure that you add a caption for each one that relates to the keywords or key-phrases you're trying to optimize your site for. Obviously there's more you can do outside of the website itself like setting up backlinks, social media, blogging, article marketing, etc. The good thing about optimizing your site organically is that you don't have to do everything at once. It actually works in your favor to add more content, pages, photos, videos, links, etc. to your site steadily over time because you're consistently adding something new and fresh to the site.
SEO is a more complex, long-term strategy. You need valuable content on your website (valuable to the reader/consumer), as well as effective title tags -- meta tags are not as important as they used to be due to people using them to try and manipulate the system. You'll also want to scatter links to other pages on your site throughout the content in a way that would make sense to -- and benefit -- the reader (i.e. don't just have lists of links to your other pages). If you have pictures on your site, make sure that you add a caption for each one that relates to the keywords or key-phrases you're trying to optimize your site for. Obviously there's more you can do outside of the website itself like setting up backlinks, social media, blogging, article marketing, etc. The good thing about optimizing your site organically is that you don't have to do everything at once. It actually works in your favor to add more content, pages, photos, videos, links, etc. to your site steadily over time because you're consistently adding something new and fresh to the site.
