...is it worth it to use Adwords?
Oh, yes. No question about it.
(Don't listen to me, Lovejoy. I work there, so I am a little bit, uhm, biased.)
But since there is no minimum spend, and no minimum term of service, why not give it a try?
(Too much coffee today, so forgive me. Couldn't resist being the first to respond.)
;) AWA
It is often worthwhile to try it just to find out how much additional traffic can be generated and what kind of conversion rate those phrases can generate.
I also find that [widgets] is a very useful term to buy when I just can't seem to break into the top 10 on a single word search.
I also find that a different kind of people look to the right than those who only look to the left. Having both the top place in the SERPs and the top ad in the Adwords stack can help to keep the competition discouraged.
1. They weren't as optimized as they thought they were, and were suprised by the amount of extra hits/converions they received.
2. Their clicks from the natural serps went down some (expected as your ads will take away from some of your naturally free listings), their ads did well, and combined they ended up with more traffic and conversions.
3. Their ppc expenditures pretty much just took away from their natural listings, combined they didn't get much more traffic, but they tended to break even or make a little overall. These people did recogonize the value of diversifing traffic, and as they paid seo's anyway, they just moved their budget around to compensate for multiple traffic means.
The advantage to trying it out (in addition to the good reasons listed in the other posts) is to diversify traffic. If you have steady streams from many areas, then a sudden decline in any single area won't overly affect your site.
I use the power posting feature to set lower maximum bids for the [exact match] for those terms. TheDave is right that it's productive to have two links on the page, but we'd rather have the free click if we can get it. Positioning the ad lower on the page than the organic listing seems to give us the best of both worlds.
If you advertise on Adwords while your are number 1 for that keyword, will you lose your number 1 spot on the free results?
We spend quite a bit on Adwords, but our site is never found (or almost never) on the free listings results for most of our keywords, so I wonder if there is any connection between the two.
If you advertise on Adwords while your are number 1 for that keyword, will you lose your number 1 spot on the free results?
AdWords and Serps are completely different entities. One does not influence the other.
If you advertise on Adwords while your are number 1 for that keyword, will you lose your number 1 spot on the free results?
Based on my own experience I'll say a categorical NO, you won't lose your #1 spot.
Adding Adwords to your marketing mix has zero effect on rankings in the organic results, either positive or negative.
This has helped us through a number of fluctuations in the results.
If you already rank number one for just about every keyword related to your site
Have you really done the keyword research to be sure of this? I personally haven't seen the case where there wasn't a bunch of minor keyphrases for which the site could not be optimized for and could not rank high for in the editorial serps, but could be very profitable PPC placements.
In the free results, it's not nearly so clear why a page rises or falls. Getting to the top ten is part science and part blind luck, and doesn't necessarily have much to do with the quality of your site as a human would perceive it.
In December, I was able to get my site back into the SERPs but left the adwords campaign (I cut the daily budget back a bit) - but you will be amazed at how many people will click on your Advert even when your site is in the top 5 or so.
Also, I decided to target typos and thinkos - which has given me an extra 100 visitors or so daily, and on the cheap - no one else has bid for most of them.
Point: if you can get decent ROI from Adwords, in addition to having top rankings, do it.
The obscure keywords like "green widgets with blue dots made in may" bring in less than 2% of my traffic.
That's circular reasoning.
You are probably right. I just find it interesting that and I just checked. For one of our keyword we are number one on Adwords, but and I stopped at 200 we are not found and there are alot of sites between 1-200 that are not even related to the keyword...not even close
If you look at it from Google's point of view why should they put me on the first page for free if I pay $3.00 a click?
Going back to the original question, If I was number one on the free listings I wouldn't touch Adwords.
It seems your competitors are trapping 10% of your golden keywords and 98% of the other keywords.
>paying $1.60 a click and they buy a product for $2.95.
As PatrickDeese said, if you can get decent ROI from Adwords, in addition to having top rankings, do it.
And that ROI includes $ and time spent on it, Not just Adwords, Over too. Give it a whril and it may work or atleast, it will generate potential ideas for expanding your reach.
Actually I subcontract to my main competitors for a 50% split ;-). As I said before historically the obscure keywords don't generate enough sales to be concerned about. If you're selling Fords it doesn't make any sense to advertise GM's
If you're selling Fords it doesn't make any sense to advertise GM's
True, but it often makes sense to advertise Fords on searches for GMs.
When just using your logs to determine keywords, you only get into the mind of people who actually found your site.
Adwords (and any other ppc) gives you the chance to think outside the box and use keywords/phrases that people might enter to search for your product, but your site isn't optimized for.
This doesn't have to be something obscure like your widgets in may example, but more like the ford/gm example in the last post by cline.
I have been using stats from Overture and other such listings, plus software that checks search phrases in real time, and matched that with what my own stats tell me. The sum of it all has been that for the product I sell the keywords are well covered. This was the main reason I asked if there was any advantage to using adwords when a site is already very well placed in the search engines. I know my competition was all hammered by Florida back to page 20+ and appear to be using adwords to get back on the first two pages. The fact that they are in and out a lot leads me to believe that the ROI can't be all that great in my market. I know the only way to tell is to do a trial run, but having come this far without spending a penny goes against the grain ;~))
