Is google too volatile to rely on? Should I move to PPC? (screenshots attached)
-
I've attached 2 analytics screenshots of sites of mine. I can't believe how volatile google has been this year for no apparant reason. The on site of my sites has not changed much throughout the year and I've not spent any serious amount of time on link building after initially building some links when the sites where first launched. As you can see from Screenshot 1 show gradual growth throughout the year but in August google completely killed all traffic from my site. Disheartened I pretty much gave up and didn't spend any time on the site at all. The for no reason in September the site bounced back with more traffic than ever.
The second screenshot for another of my sites shows intial growth and the google kills the visits again in April. It's not until June that the site starts to see growth again but after it reaches its peak mid October google kills all traffic again!
Does anyone else think that google is far to volatile for any serious business to rely on it for generating customers? I'm considering moving to PPC which is probably the end game for google but early tests show conversion rates are much lower on adwords which I don't really understand as it's essentially the same traffic source. I've been careful to create relevant landing pages for keywords in adwords.
Any thoughts greatly appreciated.
-
Hi Samuel,
Depending on the client and the budget, the way forward in our opinion is an integrated marketing strategy. As EGOL has mentioned, it is quite tough to survive with just one tactic because eventually that niche will be identified by the other players and they will beat you if they have deeper pockets. You cannot just rely on SEO to provide your client a return. The strategy now has to be a mix of SEO, PPC, social media, email marketing and other mediums that are relevant to the client's niche.
Cheers,
SEO5..
-
Thanks for the replies. As a small business I do the big brand dominating the SERPS which is worrying. I don't have the ability to be the lowest priced in my field which makes the game even harder. The profit margins on PPC aren't really there so I'm going to have to be really clever about keywords and monitoring adwords closely.
I think a mix of PPC and organic might be the way to go. I feel that I've put together a good website and played the game according to googles rules however they still insist on slapping me every so often. I'll keep up with the SEO but try to find other traffic streams as opposed to rely on google too much. It's a great source of traffic but too volatile for me!
-
It does appear to be increasingly volatile and I do worry about some of my clients - their marketing backbone is usually a single website, with little marketing diversity - so sometimes I am recommending multiple websites covering distinct niches rather than a single website - and I'm even focusing more on non-digital marketing to some extent. It's more work yet spreads the risk.
None of the websites I have worked with re: content/SEO campaigns have been hit, yet an increasing volume of my work deals with fixing websites suffering volatility for a number of reasons - what is clear is that there are mounting issues even when people haven't purposefully been gaming the system.
PPC is quite possibly worth including as part of your mix anyway - I usually run PPC alongside organic/PR/content work to maximise results.
-
Hi Samuel
Is Google far to volatile for any serious business to rely on?
No, I don't think it is but I do know of one business recently who has given up chasing organic search and just invested their time and money in PPC, but then they were not listed on page 1 anyway, so it was a simpler decision for them to do that and go for quick wins with paid search.
Should you move to PPC?
If you are receiving organic click throughs then you must be ranking well for one or more keywords. Should you give that up and not bother with Google organic at all and go solely PPC? I would suggest you don't do that. Whilst, your organic rankings are not just going to disappear because you have paid not attention to your page's SEO, that is not to say other sites won't step in ahead of you.
However, if the volatility you have experienced (and screenshot 1 for August is dramatic) is hurting your revenue, then you should consider backing it up with PPC. But only of course if the cost of clicks is less than the revenue you are receiving from them, so make sure you measure.
On Adwords click through, it always has been lower than organic search results because the person viewing them doesn't give them as much trust as organic results. They are more obviously ads and so people are not so willing to click on them when other non-ad links are presented to them. It's interesting that over time Google have lightened the background colour of Adwords (to be almost invisible now) just to try to make them appear the same an increase click through.
As I am sure you know, the best way to improve click through rate though is to pay close attention to the headline and the words of the ad, but they are still unlikely to generate as much traffic as top ranking organic links.
I hope that helps,
Peter -
Does anyone else think that google is far to volatile for any serious business to rely on it for generating customers?
I have been working on the web for over ten years and my experience is that stuff happens in your favor and stuff happens in someone else's favor. Stuff is always happening. And there are different types of stuff.
You are pointing at "Google Stuff". The algos and special efforts can kill websites. I have been lucky that Google Stuff has not been too much of a problem. I got hit by Panda on two sites but knew what to do and recovered.
The stuff that I would point at is "Competitor Stuff". I am always finding places to make money and enjoying them and then powerful competitors swoop in and I gotta fight for it. I usually survive but there are a few places where I have quit, mainly because I either can't compete with discounters or refuse to compete with them. So I put my efforts into something else.
Then you have the combination of Google Stuff and Competitor Stuff. An example is that Google knows that they can't identify quality content or quality businesses with their algo, so they use Brand Names as a substitute for quality. As an example, if you sell in a specific niche of "toys" you can easily be beaten by "Toys R Us" if they have one crappy product in your niche... or Amazon if some third party seller has just one product in your niche. Big domains have a huge huge advantage.
So, it is very risky to make a living on the web. Don't do it unless you have other income but then it if hard to compete on the web because you have to spend time earning that other income.... and a company who has a dedicated team of twenty people can put you out of business if they put a target on your niche. That will happen to you sooner or later if you are in a profitable niche. They will find you eventually, if they didn't find you years ago. More "Competitor Stuff".
I'm considering moving to PPC which is probably the end game for google
I have spent a lot of time on PPC and have done lots of training and reading. And I like math and word challenges. It does not matter how smart you are here. IF you are not able to get huge discounts by purchasing your merchandise by the train load and have shipping centers in all parts of the country to get local shipping rates for every customer, then you are going to be killed at PPC. The people who have the volume and the shipping centers will have such a cost advantage on you that you will either not be able to outbid them or they will sell at such a low cost that you can't compete. For me, PPC is a losing game.
Also, I think that SEO is a losing game. It is not about SEO anymore (other than being sure that your title tags, etc. crawlability and technical stuff is done right). It is all about building a great website these days. That is the only way to compete today IMO and hope that your competitor does not outspend or outcreate you their too.
Dangerous to make a living on the web these days. It is like a mouse trying to survive in the jungle.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Drop in Bounce Rate in Google Analytics
Hi guys, I have recently seen a large drop in bounce rate (from GA) which seems unnatural for one of our clients website. Since the start of 2018, the bounce rate was consistently between 40-60%, and then saw a random spike, and now for the past two weeks, the bounce rate is below 10%. I was wondering if anyone had any ideas if this is a problem with GA, or the site itself. Site: https://www.zoomocarcredit.com/ Any comments/feedback is greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance! Jack. SnP0Hc4
Reporting & Analytics | | ChemistryMarketing0 -
I am confuse with google analytic custom and segment report
Hi All, In google analytic when I create custom report for my ecommerce site then figures go mad. I really not able to judge peformance of device, browser and it's version, conversion, ecommerce conversion rate etc. same way if I add secondary dimension in report then also figures are not accurate. Again when I create different segment like desktop, mobile, tablet then in tablet segment mobile devices comes and in mobile device tablet appear why segment also not accurate? Is it because I am using free version? Also do we have alternative of google analytic which give same report like google analytic either device, browser, os, segment, enhance ecommerce etc? Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | dhisman0 -
Variables in Google Tag Manager
Last week I got a great answer here on how to implement GTM and cross domain tracking, now that we have that in place I'm looking for some more advice 😉 I'm wondering that if we push variabels into the data-layer of GTM, can we actually use those variables in reports as well? Do they get recorded in Google Analytics? I'd like to use some data that we push to the data layer for segmentation purposes. Anybody an idea how to achieve this?
Reporting & Analytics | | jorisbrabants0 -
Why only a few pages of my website are being indexed by google
Our website www.navisyachts.com has in its sitemap over 3000 pages of information, and this is all unique content written by our team. Now Google Webmaster central shows only 100 urls indexed from 3500 submitted. Can you help me understand why and how I can fix this issue? The website has 4 years old, is a Joomla 3.3 up to date. It has part of the content in the Joomla core content systems and part in K2. Thank you. Pablo
Reporting & Analytics | | FWC_SEO0 -
Google Tag Assistant showing Error
Hello, I am using google tag assistant extension in chrome and it is giving me one error for google tag manager at my checkout step 1 and error is -
Reporting & Analytics | | devdan0 -
Why did my home page fall off of google rankings?
My home page at www.smt-associates.com has been ranked well for various key word phrases for years. I've tried to optimize it for the search "Crystal Lake CPA Firm" and it always had ranked number 1-2. Now it doesn't even rank in the top 5 pages (actually I don't know which page it falls on). I did an on-page report card and it has an A rating. So, what is preventing Google from ranking my home page on page 1? There's not that much competition so this should be an easy ranking for me. I don't know how ling this has not been listed, but I did modify my site about 12-18 months ago with a new WP theme. Could the theme be the problem?
Reporting & Analytics | | smtcpa0 -
How Google handles keywords and punctuation?
How does Google handle punctuation of keywords within its search? If I have three keywords together, but on the site there is a question mark between them, does Google ignore the question mark? Or should I think of a new way of writing the content so Google likes it more? And would this apply with articles (a, the, etc) and prepositions such as (in, of, etc.)? Thanks a lot.
Reporting & Analytics | | Rocket.Fuel1 -
AW Stats vs Google Analytics
Hey Moz Community, I am looking to get opinions on the best practice for analytics/traffic analysis. From experience I know that AW Stats reads high and Google Analytics reads low for traffic for reason in this article http://www.smartz.com/blog/2009/01/23/analytic-confusion-%E2%80%93-awstats-vs-google-analytics/ It drives me a little nuts how far off both are for some pages. I have one article that shows 100 views (GA) and AW stats shows 5 times that number of views. Any suggestions or systems you recommend? Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | johnshearer0