Sponsored Links

[marknc]

Can anyone tell me please what percentage of searchers use the "Sponsored Links" at the top of Google's organic search results? The SEO company trying hook me are saying 30% but I'm sure they would inflate this to an extent in their push for business. I'm trying to decide whether or not to spend £400 for the first month and £80 per month after that, for a Sponsored Link placement for 5 key phrases.
Does this sound like a good investment? I would really value some feedback on this.
Mark

[Feydakin]

You know that you can sign up for your own adwords account and just do it yourself, right??
http://www.google.com/adsense


And yes, the generally accepted number is 30%.

[marknc]

Adwords is Cost per Click right? Not a flat fee?

[Feydakin]

Right - but you can set a budget and it will only spend that much each month.. The guys that are offering you the service have decided that for $80/mo they can run the adwords campaign for you and keep a little for themselves..

[mp3r4]

Originally Posted by Feydakin

You know that you can sign up for your own adwords account and just do it yourself, right??
http://www.google.com/adsense


And yes, the generally accepted number is 30%.

adwords.google.com

[spiderbait]

Absolutely right, Feydakin.

Originally Posted by Feydakin

The guys that are offering you the service have decided that for $80/mo they can run the adwords campaign for you and keep a little for themselves..

I'd add that, the "little" bit looks pretty substantial up front.

Originally Posted by marknc

£400 for the first month and £80 per month after that, for a Sponsored Link placement for 5 key phrases.
Mark

You can do it yourself, more cheaply, with greater control and with the ability to try more than just 5 key phrases any time you like.

Just make sure you spend some time learning about the AdWords system before you start spending significant money. You want to make sure that you really understand what you're doing before you start commiting to a large spend and if you're careless, you can spend a lot.

Hope this helps.

[SemAdvance]

I would say 1/3 click on Sponsored Links. Most often people know the paid ads will take them directly to what they want as opposed to organic results which more often than not resemble Bing's search commericals.

I would also agree that you can set up your own account with Adwords. Only problem is 99% of the clients I have helped with Adwords Campaign Management failed miserably & lost money prior to hiring me to manage & optimize their accounts.

What Fey misses is an important issue in that if you do not know what you are doing, or have a decent ability to write copy, and near perfect landing pages, you will more often than not lose a good deal of money.

I have a race car that I like to drive.....I however never ever touch anything on the car mechanically because I am not a mechanic in any way shape or form. I have an experienced mechanic I hire, take care of the car.

My motto is always hire someone who "KNOWS" what they are doing, as opposed to trying it myself and making things worse.

Check the company has helped clients generate sales or leads via PPC and then call for references.

Peace!

[jgruen]

30% sounds high to me. I would however love to know the answer to that question myself.

I agree with Feydakin - it is much easier and cheaper to manage your own AdWords account. Don't pay somebody for this service if you are only running a few campaigns.

[claybutler]

100% agree with Feydakin. Set up your own adwords. Start with a small monthly budget and a very short list of long tail keywords that require a full match to trigger. Also set up a landing page just for your adwords campaign. Don't just dump it on your home page. Put a clear call to action on it and even offer a special Google user discount if appropriate. You need to track the conversions. Make sure you have Google analytics installed.

[Clayton_L]

It doesn't sound like a very good deal. It can definitely be worth it to hire a company to manage your paid search spend, but with your low budget, I agree that you try it yourself. I don't think any company can afford to do even a mediocre job when they only make a few bucks a month from your account.

As far as the click percentages, the Wunderman Search Advantage study performed in 2007 found that 21% of searchers clicked on the 3 paid listings at the top of the page while 11% clicked on the side paid listings. That appears do be pretty accurate from what I've measured.

[spiderbait]

Originally Posted by marknc

Can anyone tell me please what percentage of searchers use the "Sponsored Links" at the top of Google's organic search results?

The SEO company trying hook me are saying 30% but I'm sure they would inflate this to an extent in their push for business.

I don't have solid stats to back this up, but 30% doesn't sound inflated. Perhaps it's an aggregate of all people who've clicked a sponsored link at one time or another but doesn't differentiate for people who regularly click them primarily vs. those who click them occasionally or even seldomly.

[Big Juice]

It is an easy question to answer by asking this simple question - How often do you click on those links? You can also ask your friends and family how often they click on those sponsored links.

I rarely click on those links and of my family and friends, they click on them even less than I do.

PPC can be a suckers game when not done properly and if a company tells you 30% of clicks are on PPC ads I would suggest that either they do not know the actual numbers or they are misleading you to get your money.

Even if there was 30% click rate on sponsored ads the actual sale percentages would be even lower, much lower than that.

Spend your money on proper SEO and social media, the ROI will be much bettter.

[spiderbait]

A very sober and clear perspective, Semadvance, and as usual, I don't disagree at all.

But it's worth noting that landing page development doesn't appear to be part of the offer the OP received. So, I'm assuming your advice means to seek out a more professional service than the one the OP's considering.

Originally Posted by SemAdvance

an important issue in that if you do not know what you are doing, or have a decent ability to write copy, and near perfect landing pages, you will more often than not lose a good deal of money.

[confettiguru]

That 30% could be valuable if you don't show up organically on page 1. I agree with the above, adwords are really easy to set up and manage. Do it yourself, just be sure your landing page is exactly what you say it is.
If you have organic results on page one I'm guessing you don't need to worry about sponsored results. Leave that for long tail keywords that aren't giving you results.
Set a daily budget you can live with. Watch your conversions

[Uncle Dog]

That 30% would seem to be searchers who'd rather accept what the highest bidder tells them, as opposed to what Google tells them is the most informative/likely/popular/googlish???? I suspect they are the perfect customers and well worth every penny.

[langsor]

I don't know the statistics, but personally I seldom click the sponsored links.

I only do when I plug in a Google search for a specific website I don't know the exact URL of off the top of my head, and it has a sponsored link, then I'll sometimes click the sponsored link and sometimes the organic link for that site -- random.

Or when I'm doing research on a topic and I want to compare what the sponsored links offer vs. the organic links, but that is research -- not buying.

When I'm buying I very seldom click the sponsored links because I'm comparing my own results and don't want to be spoon fed something that isn't actually a good match for my search. I've come to notice that many (most) sponsored links are NOT what I'm actually looking for, when I'm ready to spend my money.

Just my 2 cents

[morestar]

Originally Posted by spiderbait

Absolutely right, Feydakin.

I'd add that, the "little" bit looks pretty substantial up front.


You can do it yourself, more cheaply, with greater control and with the ability to try more than just 5 key phrases any time you like.

Just make sure you spend some time learning about the AdWords system before you start spending significant money. You want to make sure that you really understand what you're doing before you start commiting to a large spend and if you're careless, you can spend a lot.

Hope this helps.

well he'd have greater control if he knew what he was controlling...he's probably talking with them cause he hasn't a clue what or how to do it properly...

[Clarrie]

Mark

Let's start from the beginning here: Pay per Click is not SEO.

SEO is about optimising the content and structure of a site to gain ranking in the organic results.

Gaining position in the sponsored listings is Pay per Click advertising (or Cost per Click) if you prefer.

£400, and £80 per month after that? So how much of that is their fee, and how much the budget for the click costs?

Seems to me that they want to charge you a fee for setting up a campaign and managing it for you, but for 5 key phrases, £400 sounds very expensive to me. If you had 5 key "seed" phrases that they were then going to research and set up a major campaign for, then, maybe, but still sounds a bit steep. But sounds to me like you need to clarify what you're getting for your money.

But coming back to your "30%" question - in terms of PPC, it's totally irrelevant if the click rate is higher or lower than clicks on the organic listings. The thing here is you are buying traffic, and the only important metric here is not how much traffic you get, but your Return on Investment (ROI), and for that you need to consider how well that traffic converts into sales.

It's important to making sure you've got the right measuring systems (analytics, sales calls tracking etc) in place to track traffic coming from your PPC campaigns and measure sales and your net profit. If you don't get a net profit, its time to stop!

As an aside here, if you are doing e-commerce, I tend to find that traffic coming from PPC advertising tends to have a higher conversion rate than traffic from organic sources.

As Feydakin says you can go to Google now, and set up your campaign now (for 5 keywords, should only take you about 10 minutes). But if you are seriously contemplating spending significant amounts on paid search, heed semadvance's advice and get the help of a professional to help you optimise your campaign to get the best return, or be prepared to over-feed the Google-monster while you are climbing the learning mountain.

[morestar]

Originally Posted by Clarrie

Mark

£400 sounds very expensive to me.

Well just take a moment or two and think of how long it would take to properly setup the account, geo-localize etc etc etc, create proper ads, find the best landing pages...

at 25 bucks an hour (CHEAP) that's only 16 hours...

not too expensive at all...

[Uncle Dog]

From the horses mouth Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - Webmasters/Site owners Help

[NJ]

Originally Posted by marknc

Adwords is Cost per Click right? Not a flat fee?

You are in the right place! Do your homework before you pay anyone to do anything online. And,
Homework != checking one source.

!= (does not equal)

[T-G]

Just out of interest, I recently attended a online marketing show in Australia and the split per organic and paid clicks was presented as being dependant on the users generation.
Generation Y was 90% organic and 10% paid, gen X was 70% organic and 30% paid and Baby Boomers were 50% / 50%.

This is not a good trend for the PPC model and advertisers who rely on it, as clearly the younger generations aren't keen on the ads, perhaps they see through all the marking jargon presented by the advertiser and prefer to rely on the opinion of google's non biased algorithm and other web users who have no financial interest in the product being advertised. As the years go by and this generation gets older, the paid clicks model will be a lot less relevant across the web.

Pick the next model and you may just make a few million bucks!

TG

[Clint1]

Originally Posted by marknc

Can anyone tell me please what percentage of searchers use the "Sponsored Links" at the top of Google's organic search results? The SEO company trying hook me are saying 30% but I'm sure they would inflate this to an extent in their push for business. I'm trying to decide whether or not to spend £400 for the first month and £80 per month after that, for a Sponsored Link placement for 5 key phrases.
Does this sound like a good investment? I would really value some feedback on this.
Mark

FWIW, personally I never click on them because I've found them to be irrelevant and useless. Every time I may end up clicking on one, the product is either: not anywhere on the webpage then a search has to be done at the site, (where their site search never works properly). Or, the site doesn't even have the product anymore. These appear to be aged generic links that rarely if ever have anything to do with your specific search. G either needs to stop this, or look into the definition of the word "relevant" and abide by it.

They are also even more useless for info only sites and non-profit sites, because those places should not have to pay for placement, and most of them are not going to have the money to pay for that kind of placement. Therefore those results are even more tainted.

[jordanmcclements]

Originally Posted by SemAdvance

I would say 1/3 click on Sponsored Links. Most often people know the paid ads will take them directly to what they want as opposed to organic results which more often than not resemble Bing's search commericals.

I would also agree that you can set up your own account with Adwords. Only problem is 99% of the clients I have helped with Adwords Campaign Management failed miserably & lost money prior to hiring me to manage & optimize their accounts.

What Fey misses is an important issue in that if you do not know what you are doing, or have a decent ability to write copy, and near perfect landing pages, you will more often than not lose a good deal of money.

I have a race car that I like to drive.....I however never ever touch anything on the car mechanically because I am not a mechanic in any way shape or form. I have an experienced mechanic I hire, take care of the car.

My motto is always hire someone who "KNOWS" what they are doing, as opposed to trying it myself and making things worse.

Check the company has helped clients generate sales or leads via PPC and then call for references.

Peace!

I agree with that.

If the guys pitching for work are Qualified Google Advertising Professionals, then £400 is probably not too bad price.

You could always ask me for a quote for the same job (and you will get £50 of free advertising through me as part of my 'qualified' status).

[Clarrie]

Originally Posted by morestar

Well just take a moment or two and think of how long it would take to properly setup the account, geo-localize etc etc etc, create proper ads, find the best landing pages...

at 25 bucks an hour (CHEAP) that's only 16 hours...

not too expensive at all...

For 5 key phrases? and we're talking £ here, not $ - £400 = ~$660, so that's around $41 per hour.

And as I said, if he's going to take those 5 terms and expand them with all the derivations into a full campaign, then maybe £400 is not too bad, but its still towards the top end of the pricing range in the UK.

[jordanmcclements]

Possibly.

I would like to think that you could come up with more than 5 keywords for a campaign all the same!

There must be literally hundreds of keywords that you could come up with that are related to your web site. Adwords guys/girls should be able to help you out with some suggestions.

You can even target competitor keywords!

[gavinscott]

£400 (actually £320 if you assume that £80 is going straight to Google) seems a lot to pay for setting up a basic Adwords account with 5 key phrases, but not enough to do the job properly, with great copy and dedicated landing pages. You need to know more about what you are getting for your money.

In terms of the statistics, I don't think the actions of webproworld readers is going to be very indicative of the general population; anyone on this forum is going to be a lot more internet-savvy than most. I would hazard a guess that most Google users aren't even aware of the difference between paid and non-paid listings. I have had many a client tell me that they found me at no. 1 on Google when I know they came through Adwords.

Although I have a respectable position in organic listings, the vast majority (90% or above) of my bookings are are initiated by PPC, even when I am the top organic listing for the keyword they used.

Originally Posted by T-G

Generation Y was 90% organic and 10% paid, gen X was 70% organic and 30% paid and Baby Boomers were 50% / 50%.

This is not a good trend for the PPC model and advertisers who rely on it, as clearly the younger generations aren't keen on the ads, perhaps they see through all the marking jargon presented by the advertiser and prefer to rely on the opinion of google's non biased algorithm and other web users who have no financial interest in the product being advertised. As the years go by and this generation gets older, the paid clicks model will be a lot less relevant across the web.

Pick the next model and you may just make a few million bucks!

Baby Boomers are higher spenders, and therefore much more valuable traffic than generation Y, though obviously you also have to take into account the product you selling. It is also possible that as people grow older they become more time-conscious and will be more inclined to go with the quick option. It may be that in 10-15 years time generation X will be at 50/50 and generation Y at 70/30.

I think it pays to hedge your bets and work on both organic and paid listings.

Adwords is very easy to set up yourself. Just be careful to keep your maximum monthly spend low initially until you've learnt what works and what doesn't.

[jordanmcclements]

Originally Posted by gavinscott

Adwords is very easy to set up yourself. Just be careful to keep your maximum monthly spend low initially until you've learnt what works and what doesn't.

I would say make sure to keep your 'bids' low rather than your budget low. You get much better value this way...

[Bill Treloar]

To answer the original questions (What % of searchers use the Sponsored Links) i actually have an answer. Advertising Age conducted an Internet behavior study in 2006 and one of their conclusions jumped out at me as being surprising. They reported that 88.5% of searchers ignore the pay per click ads. Unfortunately I don't have a specific citation I can give you.

[jordanmcclements]

But I bet that has changed a lot in the space of 3 years.
As time goes by the percentage of non-tech savvy internet users keeps increasing..

[ireneherz]

Feydakin is right. You can do it yourself and set your own budget, write your own ads and experiment with your budget. It's not hard.

[pattayabridge]

I always totally ignore the adverts and have never clicked on one, don't know how this will help your % question but I guess the % is very low.

[weegillis]

DIY is good, if you are familiar with the whole process, not so good if you're on 'the learning mountain.' What you spend is one thing, what you save is another. Semadvance sums it up nicely--drive the car, hire the mechanic.

As for percentages, are they (SEO company) speaking for THEIR results, or are they just dropping a number from a biased report they read that morning? An established company will have a track record that you can follow up, just ask for some references or track down the people who own the sites in the company's portfolio. Do some checking, some studying, some investigation, then move forward from there.

Henry Ford said it best, "I may be an ignoramus, and can't tell you anything with certainty, but in five minutes I can have the person in my office that can answer any question I have."

[blitzen]

Originally Posted by marknc

Can anyone tell me please what percentage of searchers use the "Sponsored Links" at the top of Google's organic search results? The SEO company trying hook me are saying 30% but I'm sure they would inflate this to an extent in their push for business. I'm trying to decide whether or not to spend £400 for the first month and £80 per month after that, for a Sponsored Link placement for 5 key phrases.
Does this sound like a good investment? I would really value some feedback on this.
Mark

Depends on your target market and buying behaviour.
You can either pay for true marketing stats to suit your target market or do the test yourself.
I'd sign up and test it for a year (especially if you have seasonal fluctuations in your sales).
Then analyze the results from the previous years (I'd analyze by total month sales).

I don't click on the PPC links unless they're my competitors (I'm under no agreement with the SE to refrain from doing this). I find that the majority of time, the keywords don't fit what I'm seeking or the resulting website doesn't have the product.

E.g., I have a registered trademark with a made-up nonsense word. I would search for that trademark and see some stores showing up in the PPC with that mark as a highlighted keyword. Amazon was good at trying to sell a nonexistent book about my trademark. Target was good at carrying my mark. (I've since had my attorney send a cease and desist to the SE to stop that nonsense). Anyway, these stores were paying for advertising a product that didn't exist!*

IMHO, there are schemes the SE's use to increase PPCs to your site that can be a disadvantage.
This is especially true if you want to enter only a few generic keywords/phrases.
E.g., I sell garden fountains and use in my PPC campaign a keyword such as "fountain".
Then I'll pay for clickers looking for "fountain pens", "water fountains", "drinking fountains", "chocolate fountains".

Then, if you want to use generic keywords/phrases to capture customers looking for tiered, dolphin, wall fountains, etc., you'll need to negate "pen", "fountain pen", "champagne fountain", and everything other kind of fountain that you don't sell (don't sell lion fountains, cherub fountains, etc.).

One key to PPC marketing strategy is to build for your target market and attract those who are looking for only what you sell. If you get those looking for something else, that's wasted money and a disappointed customer. Organic can better target your market than PPC unless you have mega time to build the keywords/phrases properly.

The only time I'd recommend PPC is if you're site is brand new. Use it while you optimize to get those valuable organic clicks. Analyze your results. Take a risk and stop PPC for a month. Sure, it might cost money, but so does hiring a real marketing firm to analyze your target market behaviour and marketing strategies.

*NOTE: Sometimes a generic keyword is used just to get consumers to your website hoping they'll buy something else. This is like putting merchandise on the checkouts in real stores to get you to spontaneously buy something that you weren't looking for (upsell, cross sell, spontaneous sell).

HTH!

[qh4dotcom]

Before hiring an SEO company ask yourself this question

Do they guarantee that they will make me money?

What they charge doesn't matter as long as you make a decent profit.

[james113]

Originally Posted by jordanmcclements

Possibly.

I would like to think that you could come up with more than 5 keywords for a campaign all the same!

There must be literally hundreds of keywords that you could come up with that are related to your web site. Adwords guys/girls should be able to help you out with some suggestions.

You can even target competitor keywords!

1. I would never recommend more than 5 keywords/phrases to start with on a small budget and $700/mo. is not big unless your desired keywords are very very cheap. If your first 5 keywords produce good results then you should expand your horizons

2. Just because a search term is related does not mean that it will produce the desired results.

3. Using the competitions keywords is not always wise, especially for startups and small businesses. I have seen a few small businesses waste hundreds a month on "related keywords", trying to copy the competition only to go broke. To someone just getting started, the competition ussually has been around awhile already and will have a larger budget for their campaign. Larger budgets can absorb a higher bounce rate.

[weegillis]

Even while organic search may not yield as many conversions as a PPC campaign, it bears asking what are your conversions in present terms, without a campaign running? Are your existing visitors buying?

The site will still need to do the close that gets the conversion. PPC cannot effect the transaction outcome, only the beginning. Be sure your site is up to snuff to do the job when the traffic starts coming in from paid for clicks, or no matter how good a campaign you run, click wise, you'll be throwing money away.

[innominds]

As a starter, you should concentrate on ORGANIC TRAFFIC. This is undoubtedly the best way to ever lasting traffic.

[weegillis]

OP, let's hope YOUR competitors have better things to do...

Originally Posted by blitzen

I don't click on the PPC links unless they're my competitors.

Translation: "If I can't hurt my competition competitively, I'll at least be hurting their bottom line."

When is advice, no matter how good, not so good? When it includes advice like this.

[jordanmcclements]

Originally Posted by james113

1. I would never recommend more than 5 keywords/phrases to start with on a small budget and $700/mo. is not big unless your desired keywords are very very cheap. If your first 5 keywords produce good results then you should expand your horizons

2. Just because a search term is related does not mean that it will produce the desired results.

3. Using the competitions keywords is not always wise, especially for startups and small businesses. I have seen a few small businesses waste hundreds a month on "related keywords", trying to copy the competition only to go broke. To someone just getting started, the competition ussually has been around awhile already and will have a larger budget for their campaign. Larger budgets can absorb a higher bounce rate.

1. Totally disagree. Provided your ad groups, ads, landing pages and bids are set up correctly you will always get more clicks for the same budget by targeting more keywords.
2. Agreed - Experiment. Test. Analyse. Repeat...
3. Agree. I was just pointing out that you have the option..

[ArijitKRoul]

Set up own website, create some unique content for your site and apply for ad-sense accounts of own. After that maintain your site regularly.

[marknc]

My experience is that there is an inherent danger in hiring a firm to create and manage an adwords campaign for your own website, no matter what the budget. Their number one priority is to make money, so immediately you give them a £400 budget you can write off, say, 15% or around £60.
They will not be as conscientious or as sensitive to the market fluctuations relating to your specific business and will therefore be more generic with their marketing approach. This seems to one of the main problems with all sponsored links and the reason why they have become unreliable for specific search query results.
If you want a job done properly, then do it yourself. Even if this means a steep learning curve and a little extra money spent at the beginning.
We paid our £400 for the first month and the results were that we broke even. They wanted a little more money for the second month because they considered £80 to be too low to have any effect. Well, we increased the budge to £250 and so far the results are hopeless. I don't think we will be hiring them for a third month.
I intend to take the time to run my own adwords campaign in the run up to Christmas.
My sense is that no one can care for their business better than the business owner. In the case of Henry Ford, it may be a truth that "delegation" is one of the keys to success but for a small business in a tight economy it is wise to try to learn fast and work smarter by being careful with ones time and priorities.
Many thanks to everyone of you for your input on this topic.