Quite naturally with a system as diverse with features as Adwords there are a variety of elements and settings you can adjust to improve your ROI. Some of these features are simple and quick and some of these features are more time consuming. Good news, the feature I’m highlighting today is of the simple and quick variety, my favourite and no doubt yours also.

Google have recently launched a new feature called ‘Enhanced CPC’ which is an automatic bid management feature designed to increase your ROI. Sounds good doesn’t it? ….so how does it work?

This new feature works by automatically raising or lowering your max CPC bid based on the likelihood your ad will convert. It calculates how likely your PPC advert is to convert by analysing your accounts past conversion data along with a few other factors including the individual words that makes the users search query, users geographic location and time of day when the user is performing the search. A full list of the factors enhanced CPC uses to adjust the bidding is available at the Adwords help centre.

A drawback of this new feature for new users of Adwords is naturally in order to analyse conversion data you need the conversion tracking code installed on your site. So as a new user you would have to set this up first before you can use enhanced CPC.

However, this drawback is far outweighed by the advantage of receiving more conversions while hopefully reducing the overall cost per conversion and the fact the Adwords system does the hard work of adjusting bids so you can focus on other tasks.

Google describe this feature as an “ROI turbocharge” so why not give it a try and see for yourself.

Choosing the right keywords if often the most important part of organic SEO campaign, we recently watched a video from Neil Walker at Just Search who has devised a method for tracking your investment against the return.

The calculation is simple and is based on research performed by Just Search and fellow SEOs. The calculation uses the following statistics:

• Organic search traffic makes up 65% of the local search volumes provided by the Google Keyword Tool.

• The average CTR (Click through Rate) for organic position from 2-10 is 4.85%.

• The Conversion Rate from an average website will be 3.5%.

The other variables include timescale to achieve page 1, average order value, profit per order / product and investment.

We have attached a sample download of the excel file to the video blog, If any of you are excel experts and can improve the formula please email it through and we will update it.

Thanks for watching.

Click to download the ROI calculations file.

Script:

- Nick -

Welcome to this weeks SEO video blog, you often see articles and companies asking this simple question, what returns the better investment, organic search engine optimisation or pay per click advertisements?

- James -

It can be a difficult question to answer and we think that it is individual to each company trying to market on the internet, however we also think that a correctly organized organic campaign can be more effective in the long run in terms of cost.

- Nick -

When we first thought about answering this question, user behavior came to mind, so we found this eye tracking report from enquiro. This shows a very nice visual representation of where an average Google user looks once they have performed a search query.

- James -

You can see from the image that the user naturally looks towards the top left hand side of the results and in particular the first Pay Per Click result and top 2 organic listings. This suggests that if you want to gain the full benefit from your campaign then you need to be in the top 3 positions.

What this means is if you are going pay for your listings with Google Adwords then you really have to be the highest bidder in order to be the first listing.

- Nick -

With this in mind we thought we would use the information that the external keyword tool provides to estimate the cost of optimising for a couple of phrases, organic vs PPC.

You can see we have taken the average search volume for the phrases ‘air conditioning’ and ‘web design’, then the click through rate or CTR based on 3%. 3 -5 % is pretty average for CTR (Click through rate), but it can vary with each campaign. We have then multiplied the CTR with the CPC or cost per click to get a monthly cost.

So as you can see for ‘air conditioning’ it would cost on average £1200 per month to be in position 1-3 on Google Adwords, to be position one constantly it would it would undoubtedly cost most. Organically Creare would charge somewhere in the region of £500 per month for this phrase.

The other phrase we analyzed ‘web design’ would cost Creare over £5000 per month to be in position 1-3 on Google’s sponsored listings, so our organic listing provides us a much more profitable return on investment.

- James -

Of course you do have to remember that with Pay Per Click the results are instant, but with organic SEO there are a large amount of factors which contribute to a site performing in a search engine organically. What this means is that an organic campaign has a time scale attached to it. Going back to what we said at the start, organic will provide a better ROI, but you have to patient and expect to see a fluctuation in results until the domain reaches the required authority to list in the top 3 positions.

- Nick -

There is no reason of course that you cannot run Pay Per Click campaigns along side your organic strategy in order to reap the benefits of both. Thanks for watching if you have any question or comments please leave them on You tube or the supporting blog post.

Enquiro eye tracking report on Google

Many of our customers are concerned about the credit crunch, but how has this affected their budget spend on SEO?

You may be surprised to know that our current customers are increasing their SEO spend with us, but why would this be?

Well the fact is that the amount of business on offer has decreased recently and it probably will for some time. Unlike other forms of advertising the ROI (Rate of Return) associated with either Organic Optimisation or Pay per Click is very good (when you are with the right company) and as such many of our customers have been switching their spend from paper advertising to the internet. If anything the credit crunch has speeded up this process as every penny counts now more than ever.

If you need any help getting your website listed for appropriate keyword for your business (SEO) or general marketing advice then please give us a call and we will help you.