Do I need SEO & PPC?

[ljean]

My website ranks very high for my keywords, #1 in many cases. But of course paid searches rank above mine. Would PPC ads benefit me or just cannibalize my existing rankings?

The majority of the time when I search for stuff I ignore the ads and go straight to the organic results.

 

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[theag]

Yes. They might cannibalize a bit if you are already on organic #1, but you have to consider that many people are probably not like you, can't tell the ads from the organic results and just click on the first result, in many cases without even reading the headline. They just assume that the first result is the correct one.

Also, in the past years the amount of space that ads take up on the top has increased more and more, and pushed organic down, especially on mobile, which is a trend that will likely continue. So it won't hurt to diversify your traffic.

 

[Tom.V]

As I tell all of my clients, do both. Take up as much real estate as you can to get all of the potential relevant traffic that you can. Increase your odds of driving converting traffic to dominate your chosen market.

 

[JM35]

Take a look at your conversion rate and margins, along with the CPC to buy that prime real estate. Should be relatively easy to calculate the benefit of paid ads. Can't hurt to test it out with a few hundred bucks if your site is successful already.

 

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[ljean]

Alright, PPC campaign underway...

 

[johnp]

Another thing to consider is that you have more control over ppc.

As far as position one goes, sometimes you don’t want to be in the top position. sometimes you do. Shoot for top 3 positions.

 

[Yoda]

Would PPC ads benefit me or just cannibalize my existing rankings?

It will not cannabalize your rankings.

If you set up proper tracking, you should be able separate out your Analytics for paid and organic. There are two metrics to follow to answer your question directly:

• Organic revenue (up to the date of first PPC campaign) versus organic revenue (after the date of first PPC campaign)
• PPC profit

So long as [(organice - organic) + PPC profit] is greater than zero, you're good to go.

 

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