UK Expert SEO

Hi there long time no blog for me ….

I’m sure this is old news, but I have been talking to a big london PPC agency today and they were moaning about google sqeezing them on commission.. big deal you may say. well yes it is actuallly.

The way it used to work was that a client wold buy media, if they went through to the media provider they would pay X, but an agency would be able to buy media for X - 10% - 15% depending on the size of the spend and the provider.

So when a company takes on a pay per click agency they are ususlly charged a set up fee and then a percentage of the media spend - usally 10 - 15%

So as you see if you get the ‘kickback’ from the media provider, it effectively zero’s out the cost of the agency - so were all happy!

But google dont play this game - they dont give any kickback and so we get stuck with the agency fees. Thats bad, but what makes it worse is the increasing cost of online paid for search (adwords and adsense) why ?

Well the big companies are entering the fray without much online savvy. They think that in terms of broadcast advertising (tv, Radio) and display advertising (newspapers magazines etc) . they assume, within reason, the more money you burn, the bigger the bang (awareness) the bigger the uptake.

But PPC doesnt work like that. there is a ’sweet spot’ i.e. the amount of money you spend versus the return on investment. and once you hit that - any more money and youre just burning money - but im seeing loads of big spenders overspenind in the vain hope they are going to get a good ROI.

In PPC you generally look at a conversion rate of about 2% so if a click costs a £1 then its £50 per acquision. and im seeing £4 a click on generic competitive keyphrases - thats £200 per acquisition !!! and those numbers are consistant

so stupid money is beginning to roll in and….

.. as you probably know google is doing a big push on stamping out ‘inorganic’ link building - this is buying links from 3rd party sites to get a bump up th rankings.

what they want are NO commercial organsiaitons artifically buying their way to the top of the engines - its an ‘anti spam’ drive. This is like saying road speed cameras are not about making money, or that the london congestion charge is about stopping congestion!?!
So the idea is to get the money out of one place in the internet and get it into online advertising. The big idea is to fill the top ranking positions with non commercial information sites and let the commercial organisations fight it out in paid for search.

so as you see with any monopoly, they can squeeze and get away with it.