Time to Add Pay Per Click to Your Denver SEO Campaigns? The Answer is yes.

Google has done a masterful job of slowly, yet consistently diminishing the visibility of the local maps on search engine results over the last 18 months.

Let me give you an example.  Here are the results from a search for Mold Removal Denver about 2 years ago.

Here they are now (June 2012)

Here’s another example of Electrician Northglenn CO. from a few years ago.

Here are the results today:

For a great overview and infographic on this read and view the David Mihm web design and Local SEO blog at   http://www.davidmihm.com/blog/google/world/

It’s pretty clear… for great Internet visibility for your site, working on Google Maps (now Google Plus Local) is only part of the strategy. Not long ago it could provide the vast majority of your traffic. Today, it’s only a piece.

I have been involved very recently in two conversations where clients are under the impression that people don’t click on the Pay Per Click ads. This is very understandable from someone who knows something about how Google serves search results, because we all know someone just paid to be there. As I pointed out in each conversation, it is somewhat amazing to me how many Denver business owners are NOT aware that the top three results (in many cases) are in fact paid advertising.  And the more recent research seems to indicate that generically, about 15% of clicks are on Pay Per Click Ad’s. Hey… that’s as good as being in a top 3 position!

And, it’s not all that different than the days when consumer’s used the yellow pages to find local services. The biggest ads where (and are) listed first, and they receive the vast majority of the calls. People understand that they were paid advertising, and didn’t page back to find the smaller or line ads, because the company didn’t pay for that listing.

So a complete SEO program needs to take in to account three different areas, those being, organic search, local results , and Pay per Click advertising. And it should be designed to take into account the four different methods a person may use to conduct a local search:

Keyword + Suburb

Keyword

Keyword+ Major City

Keyword + zip

Each serves up different results.

Another big advantage of using the Google Ad words program is you can see great traffic statistics for key words that have become unavailable since Google stopped providing this information on many searches.

So to answer the original question, should you be using Pay Per Click?  Yes, but,  Ad words has become increasing difficult for a novice to navigate. It’s easy to waste a lot of money if you are not trained and familiar with keyword types (exact match, Phrase match, Broad Match, Negative match and others) as well as the location targeted, quality scores and types of bidding available.

Our suggestion is at least have a Internet Marketing firm who has experience in PPC set up and monitor your ad words (and any other PPC services) for you.  We have lot’s of clients getting strong return on investment using PPC.

Please feel free to call me at 303-500-3053 ext 1 if you want some help.  I may not pick up, as I get several calls a day from this blog, and have lots of other phone calls and meetings to be on or in, but I will call you back! Or feel free to email me as well at mike@myonecall.com