The attraction of Pay Per Click (PPC) online advertising
is undeniable. Each click costs virtually nothing, you
only pay for the clicks you get, and you set your own
daily budget so you know exactly how much you’re
going to spend. Most importantly, your listing appears
instantly.

On the other hand, a high ranking in the natural search
results seems unobtainable. There’s a perception
that hundreds of thousands of other businesses are competing
for your keywords, and that makes it seem like a real
rat-race. And it also seems like such a big mountain
to climb; it’s true that it can take months to
reach the first page for your target keywords. To make
matters worse, thousands of opportunistic (and some
very dodgy) ‘SEO companies’ have emerged,
looking to make a quick and big buck out of market naivety.
So to CEOs, BDMs, marketing managers, webmasters, and
business owners, the road to natural search ranking
seems expensive, risky, and beset with traffic.

But does this mean you should forget natural search?

Definitely not!

Firstly, most user studies to date have found that
people pay more attention to natural search results
because they’re more relevant. That’s the
foundation of the success of companies like Google and
Yahoo (and the reason they keep their indexing rules
a secret).

What’s more, it’s important to put things
in perspective. Hundreds of thousands of other businesses
may be competing for your keywords, but in most cases,
they’re at least as confused and disheartened as
you. So the sooner you figure out the real story, the
sooner you’ll have the jump on them.

And yes, it can take a while to reach the top, but
because your competition is – for the most part
– traveling blind, your early progress will normally
be quite quick. In fact, for most businesses, it’s
not until you reach the top few pages that your progress
will slow.

And again yes, there ARE some dodgy SEO companies out
there. But there are also some very good ones. (Go to
WebProNews.com
and sign up to a forum if you want to find out who they
are.) So long as you know the basics of SEO you won’t
be taken for a ride. (See SEO
for CEOs for a rundown of SEO basics in layperson’s
terms.)

But let’s talk bottom line…

Is it more expensive to obtain a high ranking?

Certainly not! In comparison with other forms of advertising
– even PPC in the long run – reaching the
top of the rankings is NOT expensive. The following
case study explains why.

CASE STUDY

For the past year, I’ve been working hard on the
natural search results for my copywriting business,
Divine Write. For my primary keyword, I’m now on
page 1 of Google.com (out of approximately 900,000 search
results). I’ve done this simply by writing helpful
articles and submitting them for publication on the
Internet. Luckily for me, I’m an SEO copywriter,
so writing articles is all in a day’s work. But
had I paid an SEO copywriter to write my articles for
me, I’d have spent approximately USD$5,000.

Over the same period, I spent approximately USD$3,000
on Google AdWords (my ads appeared towards the top of
the paid listings).

Now I hear what you’re saying; my natural search
campaign definitely cost more in the first year than
my AdWords campaign. But now that I’ve reached
the top of Google.com, I’ve paused all my AdWords
ads, so I’m not paying anything. If I hadn’t
chased the natural search results, I’d have continued
paying for AdWords, spending at least another USD$3,000
next year on AdWords, and another USD$3,000 the year
after that, and so on.

Of course, I have to retain my high ranking. If I was
paying someone to write my articles, that would involve
an investment of approximately USD$1,000 per year (a
saving of 67% each year).

So it breaks down like this:

Google AdWords investment:

2 yrs = $6,000, 3 yrs = $9,000, 4 yrs = $12,000, 5
yrs = $15,000

Natural search investment:

2 yrs = $6,000, 3 yrs = $7,000, 4 yrs = $8,000, 5
yrs = $9,000

Conclusion

Obviously the competition for keywords in the copywriting
field isn’t as fierce as in a lot of other industries,
so the actual dollar investment discussed in this case
study may not apply directly to your business. The important
thing to understand is that – over time –
a high ranking in the natural search results can actually
cost less than a high position in the (arguably less
effective) paid listings.

Also, these figures are based on me submitting articles
to various article banks on the Internet myself. (This
is a routine task requiring little skill. You should
be able to purchase a list of 50 or more article submit
sites from your SEO copywriter or consultant for as
little as USD$99.)

About the Author

* Glenn Murray is an advertising copywriter and heads copywriting studio Divine Write. He can be contacted on Sydney +612 4334 6222 or at glenn@divinewrite.com. Visit http://www.divinewrite.com for further details or more FREE articles.