PPC shot down by SEO experts

Experts in Search Engine Optimisation dismissed PPC as far less likely to bring about results in a debate last night (11 December).

The "B2B Marketing Debate" saw SEO exponents and Pay Per Click champions clash over effectiveness and results.

The debate, at The English Speaking Union in London, saw head of search at Bigmouth Media Andrew Girdwood argue that organic results were often perceived as more directly relevant, with a lower overall cost. He said: "“People don’t want to put more money in. For B2B campaigns SEO has a definite advantage over PPC.”"

Periscopex co-founder Simon Norris defended PPC as a marketing tool and said that its plus points were that it was easy to change, start, stop and completely transparent. He asserted that PPC was a better, more targeted way to gain leads.

Stuart Small, industry leader, business and industrial markets at Google, backed up the argument and said that with 85% of all B2B purchases starting in a search engine, paid search ads were vital to any business. He added that Google sees 80% of searchers clicking on organic results, with 20% clicking on search ads.

While the "black art" of SEO was criticised Girdwood argued that Google was excellent at filtering spam out of the index and said: “Google does an excellent job at this. ‘Gaming’ the search engine is just no longer possible the way it used to be.”

Norris also claimed that Google was trying to increase the number of ads clicked on by searchers and that personalisation changed the ads shown based on user intention. “That is not true” said Stuart Small from Google. “Google is very careful about privacy and we do not change ads based on people being logged on to Google. That is completely wrong.”

Source:http://www.mad.co.uk/Main/News/Articlex/aa351f9517854e389afd62334673b5dc/PPC-shot-down-by-SEO-experts.html