AIM SEO versus Google Search Ads - Who Wins?
Almost everyone uses internet search frequently nowadays. It’s how we expect to discover products, suppliers and information we seek. We expect the result of those searches to be a list of web pages that can provide more information, if we click on those links. For anyone with a product or website, the holy grail is to have your product or website appear early in search results - because these are the pages that are clicked on most often and they receive more visitors. You can do this by paying for a search ad, to ‘force’ it to appear - OR you can try to have Google (and other search engines) show you for free as an organic search result. The latter is called SEO, or Search Engine Optimisation, and of course its the best approach… or is it?
SEO isnt all it’s cracked up to be, for most.
If you run a massive website that gets load of visitors (also known as traffic), you will tend to have your website links appear earlier in search results because of your popularity. You can also pay someone to manage & improve the setup of your website, its text content, links and other content. Often they can improve the way your site appeals to the search engines, meaning you will get your website appear more often at or near the top of search queries. This is called SEO. It’s worth noting that search queries also are quite specific, so you need to spend time working out all the kinds of searches that people may do that you may want to appear in results afterwards. This is a big and its a endless task because you’re essentially in a war with your competitors and with the ever changing ranking algorithm ‘black magic’ of the likes of Google. SEO is not free, its expensive and its an ongoing committment. But for many companies this is a winning strategy for many of their pages.
The big BUT in this SEO strategy is that new pages almost never appear early in searches, even on very popular sites, especially in the real estate space. Pages need traffic and time to be seen by the search engines as something that people may want to see. For this reason, SEO really doesnt work well for selling specific properties and agents, unless your a massive property portal who has made pages for every suburb, street and property in advance… Which neatly takes us to Search Ads, an Agent’s and Vendor’s friend…
Search Ads can be your friend.
With something like 95% of the global internet search activity taking place on Google, its worth understanding the power of this. Just as SEO ultimately isnt free, nor are search ads. In a pay to play world, search ads work well when done well. AIM uses Google Search ads as part of many property AIM packages, as well as for agent marketing. Because properties come and go so quickly, SEO isnt really an option, but having ads for your listing appear in search results is a surefire way to capture potential buyers (and sellers) before they end up on another site, looking at something other than you or your listing. Of course, there are a very large number of ways that someone might search for a property, or an agent, so the selection of keywords is important. “House for sale in Avalon”, “New 4 bedroom houses for sale in Avalon”, “For Sale Houses, Avalon”, there are so many ways people may search. Keywords are sentences that Google uses to trigger the display of your ads - if someone types them into a search.This is no bad thing because people seeing your brand at scale online is highly advantageous in attracting future sellers. Google ads only cost when people click on them, and the cost of each of those clicks, and the ultimate cost of someone taking more interest in your property after clicking, is almost the same as Facebook. For this reason, we rate Google Display ads very highly and also include them in every single AIM package.
A major aspect of creating a search ad is to create lists of these keywords to cover your bases and allow for a variety of ways to be found. If you’re doing this manually, its time consuming work and largely guesswork. But there is a better way, and its effortless. AIM. Our solution creates hundreds of these keyword sets for every property and agent, taking into account location, attributes, names, addresses, etc - in order to make sure your ad is likely to display when someone is likely looking for what you’re offering. Sounds complex, but AIM makes it easy. Google Search Ads, whilst not inexpensive, are the biggest source of buyer enquiry of all the ad platforms in our experience.
Which is best? SEO or Search Ads?
If you’re selling a property, Search Ads win every time because you don’t have the time (nor the money) to wait for SEO to be setup. If you’re an established agent, SEO can work well, but supplementing this with ads is always a winning strategy because ads appear first. If you’re an agent on the rise, then Search Ads are a way to be seen more often at the right time. Search Ads also provide almost immediate results, whereas SEO takes a while, and if you change a page’s contents it can take days or weeks before those changes are reflected in search result output. The bottom line is they are both good, but if you’re selling property, then you may want to consider using an AIM package that bundles Google Search ads along with Facebook/Instagram and Google Display ads. Maximum coverage, using all the best channels, for the best results.
To find out how AIM Digital could bring the best results to your marketing strategy, get in touch with us today.
