Hello All,

I am looking for the most bang for my buck when it comes to the internet. I have used ad words ads and it has not been as cost effective as I had hoped for.

I spoke with a marketing firm. They told me that they could boost my presence on the internet from 50th to the top five relatively easily for about $500 per month.

What surprised me was they told me that when people do Google searches they click on organic websites before clicking on Google ad word ads.

They also said that if a person is shopping for price for a service they will normally click on the first five listings.

I did a little on line research and did find that organic websites are clicked on before google ad word ads.

Does this ring true?

Would like to know.

Thanks

Chuck

Take into consideration what they told you versus what they are selling.
I know of no optimization company that will guarantee you first page results and put it in writing with a unconditional moneyback guarantee. Just like you as an accountant the truth lies in the FinePrint
$500 is about the going rate that we see for companies to maintain host and optimize your website, seems to be a very simple thing but very complicated if you do not know our industry. These companies will feel your phone with dog and cat calls guaranteed!
I sent you a PM.

The first thing I had to do was look up organic websites and believe it or not, it's got nothing to do with orgasms or gardening. By

now you've probably figured out that I call my six year old grandaughter when I need help on the 'puter. I Googled "squirrel removal"

and got an ad for our company on the right-hand side of the page. I Yahooed "squirrel removal" and got our company three times at

three different locations with three different phone numbers. I use organic search because for me ( a complete computer moron ) it's

the fastest.

Go daddy has "get found" for 150 per year,,,,I have not used it, but they promised good results

I have got Go Daddy.

Thanks

You really need both.

They say 9% of all searches use pay per click but that number rises to 63% when someone is searching for a good or service to purchase. (The 9% number includes everyone doing research for school, fun, etc.) So you miss a shot at over half of your potential customers when you don't use PPC because you are selling a service. Not everyone does PPC correctly. There are some things that can make it more cost effective like improving your quality score, using long tail keywords, getting rid of keywords that aren't producing, time of day ads are run, etc.

Organic search is not all created equal either. Top five is nice but number one gets 30% of the clicks, number 2 gets 15%, and number 5 might get 5%. You might not see a return with a five percent click rate at number 5.

My strategy is the large cities where you can't rank one or two in the near term use Adwords and Bing. The little towns do your SEO and get to number 1. Kind of competition dependent. Don't expect overnight results either.

You can set up google ad words to only display your ad in the cities or areas you designate...i get good response from my google ad words as well as organic results...have not paid anybody...i do my own website building and optimizing as well as campaign set up