THE PAY-PER-CLICK TRAP

As I have written before, to get organic search results requires experience and a lot of hard work. Experienced developers use the site's coding, tags and even wording to obtain high search engine results purely on merit.

Although professionally-created sites can cost a little more initially, such knowledge and experience can provide a much wider range of search results, saving you a great deal of money in the long run. Unfortunately, if you have a site that cannot reach the people you need, you have little choice but to pay each month for pay-per-click advertising to be seen.

Pay-per-click is where a site owner tells a search engine, "If someone searches for these words, you show a link to my site, and I will pay you when it's clicked." Google's PPC system is called AdWords, and these results display in the 'ads' areas at the top or the right of the Google results.

The initial hook of pay-per-click is that you can "set a budget as low as $100 a month." This sounds reasonable, until you start doing the math.

To test this, we took our client, Built to Last, which needs Google results for searches relating to 'plastic adirondack chairs.'

AdWords calculated that phrase would cost between 70c and $1.36 per click. With a budget of $100 per month, the site could be shown 2 - 3 times a day for just 'plastic adirondack chairs' searches, or about 70 times until the budget ran out.

I have seen so many businesses who tried to
save money with their web sites initially, only to then
be dragged down by never ending pay-per-click fees.

Many people expend their lower AdWords budgets in just days, especially if they have competitive popular phrases.

The thing that makes PPC such a gamble is that you are dealing with human beings. The cold fact is that most search engine users comparison shop, so even if you are at the top of the list, they will still look through some or all of the other results.

Furthermore, because sites in the organic results were professionally created, they will probably be more appealing, and easier to navigate.

Add to that if any of these other sites have better prices, and the clicks you are paying for may not even become a sale. Of course, if you're not getting sales, you can always increase your budget to be seen more... and the snowball begins.

Luckily, thanks to our own WebUpdate sites with FirstPage SEO tools, Built to Last is already on the first page of Google for that and around 300 other search terms, and have approximately 5,000 unique (new) visitors a month, without spending a dime for pay-per-click.

These results using pay-per-click would require a budget around $5,000 a month, an incredible $60,000 a year, and only for Google. Bing and Yahoo have their own PPC systems that you'd have to pay for.

Such numbers are way beyond a small business' budget, which is why we do not offer pay-per-click schemes.

It is a sad fact that I have seen so many businesses who tried to save money with their web sites initially, only to then be dragged down by never ending pay-per-click fees that cost much more than a professional site would have cost.

If you have concerns with your web presence, now is the perfect time to look into our WebUpdate system sites, which take advantage of advanced marketing, SEO and promotion features to give your business the best competitive edge online.

What our clients are saying ...

Rick Spink Owner Built to Last Furniture

I used to have a website that I made myself, but as technology advanced, it became apparent it was time for professional help.

Internet Marketing and Design had just what we needed. The WebUpdate system provides all the tools we need, including search engine optimization and compatibility on other platforms like smartphones.

Our website is easily found by customers, and orders come in from all over the United States. There is no doubt that our site has been instrumental in Built to Last's growth despite these challenging economic times.

- Rick Spink, Owner
www.Built-to-Last.com