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I'm not so sure about this. I have several clients who've added ppc (GoTo) to their methods of getting traffic. In one case (a relatively new site, 6 months old) traffic is doubled, but sales are only up about 20%. For another client (a long established site, with lots of listings already in place) it's more like traffic is up 20% and sales are up 15%.
Maybe the visitor who really drills down, or who searches on the three word phrase rather than the simplest one-word shot, the visiotr who carefully reads descriptions -- maybe this is the visitor we really want for the most efficient site promotion.
I'm particularly eagle eyes about the three word phrase vs. the one word easy-shot. I have no conclusions yet -- it's much too early in this expanding ppc world to say for sure. But I do see indications that make me wonder.
If Alta settles into bottom of the page returns, that will be a place to watch. If I can finagle the number 4 spot and get into HotBot on the squeezed in listing between 9 and 10, that may be another.
As a ppc resaler the objective isn't as clear. Site promoters generally do not care about conversion ratios. Probably the best way to handle traffic ppc as a site promoter is to charge a flat rate and then broker all the profitable ppc traffic as possible. I'd always do as much bottom feeding as possible, because that is where the biggest profit will be.
I actually think #2 was the winner though just because of differences in the descriptions he used. He had one description that clearly under performed the others and that was when he was getting the #2 under two killer kw's - so it through his stats out of whack for a month and more a reflection of the bad description than performance. I feel the description used for the top slots is more important that which position you are in.
After seeing the poor performance of #1, the client will never buy another #1 again.