PAY-PER-CLICK DILEMMAS

That column touched nerves amongst many business owners who are currently paying hundreds or thousands of dollars in ongoing PPC fees. All of the call-ins had the same story. They believed that just having an online presence was all they needed.  They had sites designed inexpensively by either a friend of a friend or less experienced web designers.

It doesn't matter if you pay
for people to click your link
a thousand times a day. 
Your site still has to appeal
to visitors so they will actually
buy something or make contact.

The owners were quickly disappointed when their new sites could not obtain good search engine results. This especially hurt as the economy turned and online inquiries or sales became crucial. At this point, they were told that the only way they could get hits was to sign up for Pay-per-Click. However, even after months of paying thousands of dollars, in some cases, they were still not getting enough calls or sales, despite being clicked several times a day. Why would this happen?

As I had touched on briefly before, most search engine users are comparison shoppers, and it is this 'human element', mixed with available choices, that causes the dilemma. It doesn't matter if you pay for people to click your link a thousand times a day.  Your site still has to appeal to visitors so they will actually buy something or make contact.

If your site does not compare favorably to the other 15-20 search results (most of which will have been created by professional, experienced web developers, that's why they are in the list)  you simply will not retain visitors, and are doing nothing more than throwing your money away.

What can you do? Pay-per-Click companies will say, "Increase your PPC budget again. The more hits you get the more chance of sales." This is like paying to keep patching a leaking roof.  It is cheaper in the long term to pay to fix the underlying problems and to have the roof replaced than to continue to replace the roof patch by patch, never addressing the underlying cause of the leaks.

The highest amount a local call-in company told me they were paying for PPC was $1500 a month. 

That is $180,000 a year, (nope, not a typo)  forever, and they still weren't getting good results.

The bottom line is that for approximately half of that price they can have a completely new WebUpdate site created.  This would immediately save them $176,000 in the first year, and  $178,800 a year after, whilst simultaneously increasing sales potential.

As one company owner I recently met with said, 'Numbers like that don't lie!'

If you are ready to grow your business, now is the time to implement new web technologies such as our WebUpdate Site Management systems. They employ many advanced features designed to give your business the best competitive edge online.