There has been a lot of debate on whether a business can survive and thrive using pay per click (PPC) marketing alone. While PPC marketing can be very effective, using it without an organic search plan can be costly. There are several reasons PPC marketing needs to be coupled with organic search strategies.
1) Your Google Adwords bids can cost you more if your campaigns and landing pages are improperly optimized. Google states "Include specific keywords that directly relate to the specific theme of your ad group and landing page". A poorly optimized landing page can give mixed signals to Google and drive up your bid costs.
2) Keyword research, a fundamental process to organic search marketing is key to effective PPC campaigns. Keyword research can reveal inexpensive long tail keywords with bid prices significantly lower than generalized search terms.
3) Organic ranking has more credibility than PPC ads and the synergistic effect of having both an organic ranking and a PPC ad can actually increase your ad click through rate.
4) PPC advertising has no shelf life. Organic Search engine marketing results can carry on for months while PPC traffic stops instantly when you stop paying for ads.
5) PPC advertising is very transparent, competitors can easily see what keywords you are bidding on, your daily budgets, and your strategies like when you historically increase or decrease your spending. They can adjust their efforts accordingly. Organic search strategies are less transparent.
6) Not having an organic presence for your brand can open the door for squatter type websites that are created using similar domain names. These type sites prey on your brand name and hurt you in a couple of ways, first users are likely fooled into thinking the squatter site is you and when then visit the site they are greeted by your Google ads. This creates a double jeopardy because you end up paying for traffic you should have gotten anyway, or they just abandon your brand all together.
7) Ads space on smaller screens like mobile devices are limited due to size. On the typical Google search on an Iphone you will see a total of four sponsored ads, two at the top and two at the bottom, yet there are ten organic listings (Includes local listings). Those four ad positions will get very competitive as the population migrates to mobile devices.
So while PPC marketing can be effective, a mixed approach of Organic and PPC marketing can be even more effective.