The cost to send a visitor to your site is an important metric needed to compute marketing ROI. For paid search such as the use of Google Adwords, this cost is simply what you are billed each time your Google ad is clicked during a search query. For visits to your site through social media engagement or organic (unpaid) search, the cost is time. In this post, we look at pay per click numbers for paid search in financial advisory, insurance, accounting and real estate. More than a necessary metric to compute paid search ROI, these pay per click numbers represent out-of-pocket costs you do not incur when you send a prospect to your site via organic search or social media.
In a previous post on SEO, we identified a set of keywords used by financial advisory, insurance, accounting and real estate professionals in posts that achieved Google page one ranking (July 14 2012). We now estimate what these professionals would have had to pay using Google Adwords for this same set of keywords. The chart below displays the estimated cost per click for those keywords using paid search – or, out-of-pocket costs your would not incur using organic search or social media.
Pay Per Click
Google favors those with deep pockets… it’s not as level a playing field as other types of marketing where you pay the same as everyone else. Independents can’t bid-compete with big agencies or corporations that have millions to spend on marketing.
Google reminds me of that old Twilight Zone episode “To Serve Man”
If you don’t know the reference, google it