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[George Brandt Contribution Level: 1]

Hello,

Great discussion! I tend to agree with and use both camps. The difference lays in the fact that PPC is immediate, SEO takes time.

If you're after the money terms I personally use PPC to drive traffic to my test sites and track to see which keywords terms are worth pursueing investing my time in SEO efforts.

If there's no money in a keyword group, no point in wasting my valuable time building a site and going after those keywords. You can split test in PPC in a week or two and do the kind of research that may take months to find out using SEO.

I think you have to consider what your time is really worth in that regard.

[David Dalby Contribution Level: 2]

I've know many PPC guys who are experts and made money but they still have a success rate for PPC campaigns of 1 in 5.

PPC is expensive and many marketers have spent thousands and NOT made money.

PPC guys need to target very specific keywords that people search and it's not easy.

PPC has destroyed many a marketer, just ask digital forums.

PPC is an elephants graveyard for Internet Marketers if not used carefully.

SEO is free, gets traffic and works well...you need to build a list from this traffic and get repeat sales and/or a membership site with monthly income.

I've had plenty of top5 google spots without PPC

[David Dalby Contribution Level: 2]

I've know many PPC guys who are experts and made money but they still have a success rate for PPC campaigns of 1 in 5.

PPC is expensive and many marketers have spent thousands and NOT made money.

PPC guys need to target very specific keywords that people search and it's not easy.

PPC has destroyed many a marketer, just ask digital forums.

PPC is an elephants graveyard for Internet Marketers if not used carefully.

SEO is free, gets traffic and works well...you need to build a list from this traffic and get repeat sales and/or a membership site with monthly income.

I've had plenty of top5 google spots without PPC

[Eric Su Contribution Level: 2]

I concur with Adam and those that mentioned PPC could be vital to all other SEO. I too am setting up Niche mini blogs targeting keywords. Original, helpful content in article form has always stood the search engine test of time.
Not putting all of your eggs in one basket is so true. I found it best to use the slight edge (great book by the way) when it comes to marketing. Leads coming in from 4 or 5 different forms of marketing is best.

later,
Todd

Yes "The Slight Edge" is a powerful book!!!!! I love it.

You're either growing your business every day or you're depreciating your business every day.

[Dave Kotecki Company: Life Force International Contribution Level: 5]

Hi Kurt point well taken. However, aren't there tools available where you can determine which keywords used in PPC advertising are converting? Also, if you're just beginning to market you could use that strategy as a way to get traffic that will convert with SEO right?

Val

Val, you have stumbled across a great
secret that I haven't heard many people
talk about.

Google is the ultimate test bed for keywords.
If you use your adwords account to test keywords
for CTR (click through rate) you'll find the ones
that people are interested in.

Then use those keywords for articles, videos,
etc.

That's a good way to use PPC and SEO together.

And Adam's technique is fantastic.

[Kurt Henninger Company: Shaklee Corporation Contribution Level: 5]

Hi Kurt point well taken. However, aren't there tools available where you can determine which keywords used in PPC advertising are converting? Also, if you're just beginning to market you could use that strategy as a way to get traffic that will convert with SEO right?

Val

Val,

My experience with any tools like that is mediocre at best. While you can get a huge list of keywords, plus some will claim they show you how well, or the likelyhood that they convert well....I've found them very unreliable. At least that has been my experience.

Remember, your own conversion depends on many factors, but is greatly influenced on what the core offer is for your marketing.

My best advice is that, even if you do use those tools, you still need to test to what ever data you get from outside sources.

Testing yourself is the only way you can know for sure whether or not something really converts, or converts well enough for you individually.

[Ferny Ceballos Company: Numis Network Contribution Level: 4]

It's been interesting being the fly on the wall as this conversation took hold.

The truth is, everything is time and place. All of you are right... depending on the time and place.

Do you need to test your keywords on PPC before you do SEO? It depends.

If you are doing SEO to get in front of the search engines for a big launch - MLM, product, etc. or capitalize on buzz, the answer is NO, because you can't. The traffic happens with the launch and to capitalize on the buzz, you don't have time to test.

If you are doing SEO to take over niche or market, it's a very good idea to test your keywords.

I could go through all other points, but the bottomline is that there are no black and white answers. As you study SEO and PPC more closely, and gain an understanding of the marketing fundamentals and psychology at play, you can assess a situation and pretty quickly determine if testing is necessary or not.

Doing PPC really forces you to think about the mindset of a keyword, which helps develop this intuition. So PPC is a great testing and training ground for search engine marketing, but it has limitations.

In this market, I personally hardly ever test, unless I'm going after highly competitive terms and it will take me time to acquire the ranking. But if the keyterm is low in competition, some quick SEO tricks, I get the rankings and get free traffic. The traffic is free and came fast. Why test?

-Ferny

[Ogundele Olawumi Contribution Level: 1]

Although this is a great post, I can't help
myself.
I'm on a roll after the million dollar question.

Here are my top 10 reasons these top 10 reasons are wrong:

10. Of course it's advertising. You do it to get people
to come to your site. Then hopefully they buy stuff.
9. SEO is a process to get people to your site. If you can
build credibility on your site, who cares how they got there?
8. SEO doesn't "go viral", your content does. If your content is
good, (see #9)
7. Who cares about organization? All that matters is if you sell
stuff once someone gets there.
6. How does SEO make the user experience better? The content
is the same whether they found you on organic results or the
PPC side.
5. Who hasn't met Google by now?
4. Once again, it's your content that matters, not what gets people
to your site. Do you really believe that you will appear to have
more authority because your prospect didn't click an ad to get to
your site? Why?
3. It would take too long to come up with an answer to this one, so
we'll just go with it.
2. PPC will get you far more traffic far faster. Really.
1. I'm not laid off, and if everyone was, nobody would have any money
to buy your stuff anyway. Besides, if you wanna make money fast and
you have good offers, PPC is the fastest way to make money online.

And nothing is free. Even if all you spend is time.
Oh wait. Then there's effort.
So unless your time and effort are worthless to youk,
nothing is free.
Except air.
And even that ya gotta work for.

I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I
enjoyed writing it.
Everything works if you're good at it.

Great modification!

[Dave Kotecki Company: Life Force International Contribution Level: 5]

It's been interesting being the fly on the wall as this conversation took hold.

The truth is, everything is time and place. All of you are right... depending on the time and place.

Do you need to test your keywords on PPC before you do SEO? It depends.

In this market, I personally hardly ever test, unless I'm going after highly competitive terms and it will take me time to acquire the ranking. But if the keyterm is low in competition, some quick SEO tricks, I get the rankings and get free traffic. The traffic is free and came fast. Why test?

-Ferny

I would say that in this case, you've already
tested the system you use to get rankings.
Plug the keyword that has the right qualifications,
and you already know that it will work as far as
getting traffic to your already tested landing or
sales page.

When you know your conversion rate for your
landing page, and the qualifications a keyword has
to have to be successful, all you gotta do is plug
your keyword into the machine and it comes out
sales.

Or so it would seem to me.
Kinda like knowing that putting gas in your car
will make it run and get you where you wanna go.
Doesn't matter which gas, it still works in your engine.
Put diesel in the tank, and you go nowhere.

[Kurt Henninger Company: Shaklee Corporation Contribution Level: 5]

Ahhh this HAS been an excellent discussion here on this topic, many different viewpoints, all based upon our own personal experiences.

I am an advocate of testing, as it does end up saving the people I work with a ton of time as they break into SEO. It can take as little as under $1 to test a keyword out, particularly if its a new one, and you can throw up an ad in just a minute or two.

For the most part, I've found that people who are new to the online world, have no idea what the difference between a more general browsing keyword and a buyers keyword.

After a while you do develop a kind of sense on what kinds of keywords will convert well, and ones that won't, again, but thats only after getting some real experience with keywords.

Personally, I've in the past spent tons of time getting page 1 rankings for very competitive keyword terms (in the millions and tens of millions of references) in this industry, only to really figure out that while the traffic might be free, it didn't really convert well to leads or sales, and my time definitely isn't free.

Its good to see lots of different opinions on this topic. But, for me, SEO falls into the realm of (I think Perry Marshall put it this way) getting more clicks from more places once I know they convert. But it is a very important part or piece of the puzzle and an excellent way to scale your traffic up.

PPC, SEO, Article Marketing, Videos, even PPV and other crazy stuff, you should hit 'em all as your customers are everywhere.

Anyway, again good discussion on this, and I will agree, there is no right or wrong answer on this one. Cheers!