Michael,

Thanks so much for the answer - and for the complete explanation.

I greatly appreciate it

Steve

I can tell you from personally experience, organic only can really suck. In the past, I've spent so much time doing SEO, even hiring a so called SEO expert and it has never long lasting. Never.

Like Michael said, your always working to try and keep up.

While I made good when G loved me, it was usually short lived. I'm sure I made out and my time doing the work was worth it, but it didn't get me rich.

Jason brings up a good point about keywords/phrases that convert, I know I've have traffic that would not convert for any thing. Like a waste of bandwidth.

Not to mention, how your position on the first page can make a big difference in sales and conversions, which is another thing you don't have much control over.

It doesn't help with so many marketers shouting you can get on G's first page in two days. Hell, any one can get on the first page quick, and thats about how long it lasts, then they put your page in it's real place in line.

I have a client that does 90% organic. And another that does organic and article marketing and very little advertising of any kind. I actually think, in his case, a print campaign would be splendid and we're working on that. If you do purely organic, you are often at the mercy of Google's whims. So if you do organic, there are a variety of things that must happen to protect against a change in algorithms including but not limited to other search engines. For instance, while we all know Google is king, there are some markets where Yahoo is actually a more important search engine or at least equal.

I think in the next few years, we'll start to see certain search engines for particular markets which will return results that are more important to these markets. This will be great for pitching to a particular group and reaching them without relying exclusively on search words in a more generic search engine.

Some clients do a combo of ppc and organic. For my clients, a balance of the two is crucial. It depends on the client and what they sell, though. And since I have such a variety of different clients, I have to advise based on their goals and sometimes that is not a product but they want to achieve something. Some goals, products or services do far better with a heavy PR campaign and a print/web/direct mail advertising focus as support at the beginning. But for the most part, a message that can be communicated through several different media channels to a target market is ideal.

I think if you do sales letters, you most certainly have to do ppc because you don't get the benefit of page rank for a number of pages. This works better for many products, particularly if you have partnerships with other marketers who will pitch yours.

You just have to consider that menu driven sites will rank better organically most of the time as subject matter is condensed to a particular page. In the case of someone who is building a brand, they need the search engine equity over the long term. One of my clients has an internet store that has been online 11 years and that rank is key to her success while the paid support campaigns help her achieve new awareness. I never say never because I have to hear the client's goals and consider what it is they are selling.

As an advertising person, I do think a consistent paid message helps support the organic results. However, organic results are unmatched for credibility, particularly in some of the markets I work in. So like everything, it depends.

Wow! Thanks annemoss for that great reply.

Fair arguments for both sides there.

Thank you for the insight.

Jason's right - paid for testing, then pursue w/organic for pages/sites that convert. ppc/adwords/etc is great for immediately turning a spigot of traffic on to your site (lesson learned from a six-figure ppc marketer = be very very specific in your k/w phrases and send to different landing pages/optimized for what they're searching for, a lot of work)....

but long term you don't want to have a drain on your budget of ppc ad spends; it's best to find what sells best via ppc, then optimize a mini network of sites related to those kw phrases for best sales conversions ... I often "park" domains with content on them for future projects, years ahead of time, so that by the time I launch, I've likely got top-10 google positions, so I don't have to spend anything on paid..

-k

p.s. for example, google the phrase:

copywriting dvd
or
trading dvds

and see who has 3 of the top 4 spots, including #1 etc..(that would be me, and with no site updates for years, and no work on it for a long time... it's a myth that you have to constantly update sites for #1 spots in google, depending on kw phrase/niche etc).

I currently get about 50% of my traffic from Organic and 50% from PPC, mostly Adwords.

I've done a ton of link building in the past to get some pretty good rankings for a few keywords that I wanted... but now I am so burnt out on link building that I have not done it in a while.

All of my traffic is organic. But then again, I don't sell products right now. My only purpose is to gain copy clients and I don't need any more than I have right now.

One of my client's sites, which I maintain, was using PPC exclusively. This was for a physical product. He only has one or two keywords that really apply to him, and after a few months, he ruled the SERP on those words. So he's entirely organic also.