This is a question that we are asked often: “Should we invest in PPC or in SEO”?

My answer is typically that you should always be investing in PPC no matter what stage you are at (Startup or Fortune 5000) and that SEO depends on where you are in the life cycle of your business.

I recommend that smaller companies without a proven revenue model stay away from investing in SEO until you have a clearly identified business model. On the other hand, I almost always recommend SEO (in addition to PPC) for more mature companies. The reason is two fold.

Reason #1: Mature Companies Know What a Client is Worth
You should never invest a ton of time or money into something until you have a clear idea of what your return will be. Startups often have to change their offering several times to adapt to customers true wants. A startup investing into SEO without seeing what the average value per customer is going to be is doing just that. A mature company on the other hand should have their product/service clearly identified and know within a decent margin of error how much an average customer is worth to them on a gross and net basis.

Reason #2: SEO is not Immediate. PPC Is.
Investing in SEO should be part of a larger plan to attain more customers at a lower cost than PPC. For companies that are still proving their business model, ppc is a great way to attain leads at a reasonable rate and evaluate your conversion rate. After 100 or so leads, you should start to formulate a good idea of your conversion rate and the average value of the customers. This gives you a rough idea of your ROI for PPC. My recommendation for more mature companies is to decide how much you are willing to spend to attain a new customer and after running some professionally managed campaigns, evaluating if web leads convert well for your company. In most cases, they do. In this case, we recommend investing in SEO to cast a bigger net, attain more leads, and most importantly, get the leads before the competitors do.

The good news is that MOST industries still have relatively low competition rates. If you are in a niche arena and if you focus on certain geographic regions, SEO can help you attain a much larger number of leads. However, it will take time. Do not expect overnight first page rankings. A first page ranking on Google happens when Google determines that your content is both credible and more relevant than the content of those you now rank above.

Benefits of PPC:

• Quick Feedback – With a few hundred $$, you should know whether or not your current offering will convert.
• Help you determine which terms convert and which ones don’t. This will help you determine which terms you should invest into getting optimized for the search engines.
• You can geo-target your ppc ads to show specific pages to different cities.  So, for example, if you have an office in Houston and in Atlanta, you can show geographically specific landing pages to each area.
• Captures the portion of web surfers who only click on ppc ads.
• Very scalable for smaller companies.  You can start with a low investment and scale it up to as much as you can afford. It can be a terrific growth medium and one of the most effective and efficient forms of advertising.

Benefits of SEO:

• Helps you attain customers at a lower cost than ppc.
• Free, high volume traffic from the search engines.
• Enhanced credibility.
• Helps you capture the  searchers who click only on search engine results (not ppc advertisements).

A variety of factors go into evaluating PPC and SEO as a marketing tool for your business. If you would like to learn more about how they can benefit your business, please contact us at 1-866-960-2318.

Eric is a search engine optimization specialist who leads the SEO department at Immix. Immix is an award winning web design and search engine optimization company. Immix has been serving companies ranging from startups to Fortune 100 companies on a national level for nearly 10 years. You can contact us for a free consultation at 1-866-960-2318.

This chart is a little dated (March 2010) but it will serve the point for this article. Here is the list of the Top 10 Online Retailers by conversion rates as reported by marketingcharts dot com.

Top Online Retailer’s by Conversion Rate:

1. Schwan’s – 40.6%
2. Woman Within – 25.3%
3. Blair.com – 20.4%
4. 1800PetMeds – 17.7%
5. VitaCost.com – 16.4%
6. QVC.com – 16.0%
7. ProFlowers.com – 15.8%
8. Office Depot.com – 15.4%
9. Oriental Trading Company – 14.9%
10. Roamans – 14.4%

I always enjoy looking at the top converting online retailers because it gives you examples of companies that are crafting effective design. Note that I did not say ‘good’ – I said ‘effective’. The key for a website is to build one that helps you meet your objectives. Often times, individuals and companies get so caught up on specific aspects of design that they never take the time to look at the overall picture and focus on whether or not their site is going to help them meet their objectives.

I am not stating that good design is not important – it is. As it goes, there is no second chance to make a first impression. However, the first priority after getting to a point where you are presentable and have a good foundation is being able to get the opportunity for people to make a first impression. If you are too busy inside getting ready for the job fair, you can end up missing out on a lot of great interview opportunities. Similarly, the only true way to ‘test’ your ability to convert with your website is to get a lot of people on your site and track the results. Often times, over developing on the front end leaves you in a vulnerable position as it can eradicate the budget critical to further developing the site to be more effective once you better understand what will make it more effective from the people who are paying you.

Website Design Houston – How to Increase Conversion Rates:

1. First and foremost, use targeted landing pages to increase conversion rates. Sending all of your traffic to the same landing page is no longer acceptable on the internet. It is too easy to create targeted landing pages that not having them is simply a sign that you are falling behind the times. It is a fact that a targeted landing page will convert better than a general page.

2. Secondly, use split testing among those landing pages to increase conversion rates. Have two to three variations of each of your landing pages at a minimum. Doing so allows you to identify the factors that are increasing the conversion of your traffic from merely visitors to newsletter subscribers to paying customers to repeat customers. Track your traffic like your life depends on it. Your wallet certainly does.

3. Thirdly, make sure that you make it easy to find your contact information as well as the buy buttons for your products. You would be amazed at how many companies make it difficult for customers to buy from them. I once evaluated a website for a full redesign where the site required the customer to take 14 steps to buy a product. 14 steps!! While that is on the extreme side of things, it demonstrates how oblivious people can be to ease of purchasing from you. Make it easy. Keep it simple.

4. Fourth, but most importantly, get it under way. Work with a reputable web design firm with a proven track record of delivering good sites that work. Likely, your specialty is doing something other than creating sites. Work with a specialty team and let them do their job. It is worth paying a premium early on to have something done right than having to redo it several times and not achieve optimal results.

By implementing these tactics, you can increase your conversion rates. We will follow up with more specific tips and examples for how to increase your conversion rates in the weeks and months to come.

Eric is a writer for Immix Productions, an award winning custom web design firm located in Houston, TX. You can reach them at 713.789.8699.

Welcome to the largest resource for website design Houston TX resources!
Our site features resources on how to create a professional website that helps your company grow.

Whether you are a Fortune 500 company or an entrepreneur with the next big idea, we can help you launch your business online and improve it as your grow. Our vast experience on the web has given us the skills needed to not only launch beautiful sites, but also to launch sites that help your company succeed.

We are architects of the web and can help you increase your conversion rates, improve your search engine rankings, improve your site traffic, setup ad campaigns, and even integrate automation into your site to improve the efficiency of your company.

Website Design Houston TX can help take your company to the next level:

1. A powerful website that helps educate and sell potential clients.
2. An online marketing campaign to drive targeted leads to your site.
3. A ‘sales funnel’ to help you convert your prospects into paying customers.
4. Powerful tracking systems to help your company measure it’s success online.

A recent website design project we completed in Houston TX.

List of industries website design houston tx caters to:

1. Restaurants – Get more clients in your door with a custom website design in Houston TX.

2. Doctors offices – Are you a doctor in Houston, TX? If so, we can help you get more patients coming to your offices.

3. Lawyers – Every day, thousands of people in Houston, TX look for specialty lawyers on the web. If you do not have a website, you are missing out on a large number of potential clients.

4. Mechanics- People no longer open up the yellow pages in search for a mechanic. They do a search on the internet.

5. Businesses – We help small, medium, and large businesses in Houston, TX with an array of budgets get a clean and professional website design online.