SEO vs. PPC: The 2009 SEO Uprising

Search engine optimization (SEO) reaches the people who are looking for you right now, and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising reaches a back-of-mind market similar to billboards and television advertising. Cost considerations and increasing market competition positions SEO for a huge uprising in 2009. Although it is likely that both SEO and PPC will continue to see big gains against all other marketing methods in 2009, my prediction is that the 2009 SEO uprising will be substantial and swift in the first half of the year and carry through the end of the recession.

SEO and PPC Comparison

Both SEO and PPC each have a strong place in Internet marketing, but let us look at a very simple comparison of SEO and PPC and how they each work for or against you. I will give you a description followed by pros and cons of both SEO and PPC.

Search Engine Optimization a.k.a. SEO

SEO focuses on bringing your Website to the top listings returned by search engines based on its relevance to a search engine user’s query. As quoted from my recent article “SEO in a Nutshell“, a simple decription of SEO is as follows:

“SEO is, the practice of improving the qualities of a Website in order to be better indexed in search engines. In very non-technical terms, SEO makes it possible that when somebody goes to their favorite search engine, usually Google, and searches for something, that they find your listing at or near the top of the list.”

Considering that the focus of SEO is to be found by customers rather than finding customers, it has a much higher conversion of lookers to buyers. Because of SEO’s very nature, it is the most targeted approach to the market.

SEO requires quality Website content that people want, and search for using a search engine. The content should be on-topic, which is to say that if the Website is about beauty products, you do not try to optimize it for fishing lures and tractor tires.

The Pros of SEO - SEO lasts a very long time. Once the content is produced, optimized for search engines, and reaches a high search engine placement, the cost stops while the reward keeps coming in. SEO provides residual benefit, and the return on investment (ROI) of SEO increases over time.

The Cons of SEO - The best results come from paying a writer and SEO professional to research the most effective keywords and achieve the proper search engine placement. This will generally have a higher upfront cost.

Pay Per Click Advertising a.k.a. PPC

PPC is generally based on a bid-rank system, whereby companies place a maximum bid for the position and frequency that their advertisement will be displayed, as well as a daily spending limit. For simple comparison, I am also grouping pay-per-impression advertising and other methods of online display advertising into the mix. They all have much similarity in that they display the advertisers message alongside the content that users were actually seeking.

There are many variations to the pricing models, but the basic principle is that the advertiser pays for each time somebody clicks on their advertisement, or in the case of pay-per-impression ads, every time the ad is displayed to a visitor. A key to PPC or display advertising success is in the ad placement strategically reaching the proper demographic.

The Pros of PPC / Display Ads - PPC and display advertising in general can provide greater exposure to a back-of-mind market that may not have considered your product or service until they saw the advertisement. This can prompt users to buy when they were not already in the market.

The Cons of PPC / Display Ads - Each method of PPC or other online display ads have a termination point. When you stop paying for the ads to run, the benefit is gone. There is not a residual benefit, and the return on investment (ROI) of PPC stops when the spending stops.

SEO vs. PPC / Display Advertising Summary

Each Internet marketing method has a place in Internet marketing, and they often work nicely together. With greater consideration given to the return on investment (ROI) of online advertising and marketing during recession, SEO has a leg up for 2009. While the ROI of PPC and display advertising drops sharply when the investment stops, the ROI of SEO keeps growing.

In either case, 2009 will bring changes to Internet marketing. It is most important that whether you use display advertising or SEO, you should do something to assure your place in the 2009 Internet market.

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Mark Aaron Murnahan, Web Guy SEO, Internet Marketing, and Website Development Blog

2009 is the Year of Meta-Social Media: 6 Services Compared

While taking a look at this list of social search engines collected of at the TopRank Online Marketing Blog it dawned on me: 2009 is the year of meta-social media. I’ve been encountering tools that fit the description all over recently but I couldn’t find an apt term to describe them. Today I will introduce and compare 6 meta-social media services.

What are Meta-Social Media? Let me give you three well known examples that gained a huge popularity in 2008 already:

1. Twitter
2. FriendFeed
3. Social|Median

Twitter has been established long ago measured in Internet time but it’s a transitional form. It’s 50/50 a social media and meta-social media site or service. Both FriendFeed and Social|Median are two thirds meta and one third “simple” social site. We have several new less known meta social media sites now out there but let show you what I mean based on those sites you know.

First wave social sites like StumbleUpon, Delicious or Digg have one thing in comon inspie of huge differences: They collect links to original stories.

Simple social sites create value or conversation around stories from original sources. They assist users in finding out what’s truly important or high quality by managing the wisdom of crowds. We have seen that often it’s the ignorance of crowds but to some extent this model works.

The most important factor from the user or contributor perspective is: You have to actively spend time and effort to participate and add content to those sites. This had some huge impact ob the whole Web, just think of the new aristocracy or rather meritocracy of social media power users.

Now compare those to Twitter:

You don’t have to add original sources to Twitter, you can but you also can link to your social media submissions elsewhere.

This way Twitter collects, fosters and focuses conversation from several places while it still works like first wave or non-meta social sites: You submit originals (that is direct links to original sources, without other social media interfering) and talk about them as well. While this combines approach is fine it also adds workload and it mkes yu link-hop. You get a link to Digg on Tiwtter and then you get to see the original. So Twitter is half social media site hlaf a hub connecting other social sites.

Take a look at FriendFeed and Social|Median and you notice the difference: Both sites collect social media submissions from elsewhere while still maintaining a one third part of a conversational social media site that collects and assesses original submissions.

You will notice that you need far less effort to make FriendFeed and Social|Media work for you. You don’t need to be very active there to get really tailored news and links. My SEO 2.0 network on Social|Median by now outgrew my first SEO 2.0 group on Mixx and exceeded 200 members. Most of the time it works on autopilot. I use FriendFeed much in the same way, as a meta-social site that gives me an overview about waht’s going on elsehwere. It’s largely automated but it adds the right amount of crowd wisdom.

Still there is a problem with Twitter, FriendFeed and Social|Median: You have to spend some of your precious time over there. It adds to the time already spent on the first wave social sites where you add content etc.

In 2009 meta-social media that predominantly organizes information and links contributed elsewhere will rise to popularity.

Those social sites allow you a quick overview n waht’s going on based on the info added, submitted, collected and assessed elsewhere. So let me move on to three exapmles of full fledged meta-social media:

1. MicroBlogBuzz
2. ReadBurner
3. POPrl

MicroBlogBuzz is a very simple site both from the layout and the function: It collect and sorts links shared on several microblogging services like Twitter in a Digg-like manner.
ReadBurner does the same but taking web based RSS readers/starting pages as input. It collects and sorts items shared n Google Raeder, Netvibes and Newsgator.
The simplest example is POPrl, it’s a combination of a URL shortening service with a Digg-like interface. The popularity is measured by actual clicks on the POPrl links on Twitter (or elsewhere).

I collected those sites in a bookmark folder called social media 3.0 due to a lack of an apt term, but meta-social media is the most logical descriptive term for those. They have several things in common.

Meta-social media

* rely on input from other social sites
* are largely automated
* add value by organizing and structuring data
* offer a quick overview
* change your position to a bird perspective

Meta-social sites have advantages for all involved parties:

* Social sites and contributors get additional exposure
* Users save time and effort
* Meta-social sites work on auto pilot so the costs are low

So the rise of these new wave of social media 3.0 (Digg being 1.0, Twitter being 2.0) or meta-social media is inevitable and very useful for all netizens. Meet me on Twitter, FriendFeed and/or Social|Median.

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