Quality Content Can Lower PPC Costs.

Jon Wuebben noted in his book, Content is Currency, that a pilates studio reduced PPC costs by 50% with SEO-optimized, on-topic content. Dedicating just 15% of your paid advertising budget can lead to the content essentially paying for itself in lower PPC costs, simultaneously increasing visitors and visitor satisfaction, because they will see content directly tailored to the keyword in their search.
The 50/15 Rule will not be appropriate for every marketer in every situation. The Rule is not meant to suggest that every single company or campaign needs to follow it like dogma, but it’s meant to work like the two-month salary rule on engagement rings, which was introduced by DeBeers, the diamond producers. We want to promote the 50/15 Rule to give the same kind of guidance to someone who is unsure about how, and how much, to spend on SEO and SEM. For example, spending a lot of money on a SEM campaign without having proper landing pages, each with great, relevant, keyword-optimized content on it, is either going to result in a failed campaign or at best one that under-delivers the potential ROI. At the same time, if someone spends 40% of their SEM budget on content, and only 60% on the price per click, that’s probably overkill, and again, not optimizing ROI. In the same vein, it’s a bad idea to have a SEO strategy that is 100% links and 0% content, or even 75% links and 25% content, especially with Google’s recent Panda, Penguin and other updates.
In summary, we’re hoping experts will agree that 50/15 is a reasonable guideline in the same way that two months’ salary is a reasonable guideline for engagement rings. If DeBeers’ rule didn’t work as a good guideline, we would not be talking about it over 50 years after it was introduced. We explained the 50/15 Rule to Kevin Lee, founder/CEO of Didit, who has advised companies on online marketing since the late 1990’s and who knows as much about SEO and SEM as anyone. His response, which he posted in a blog post:

…because so many marketers and advertisers under-invest in content, I found myself thinking about all the reasons why those under-investing in content should consider ramping up that investment and how a rule-of-thumb might help them. … When it comes to getting senior management to approve new budget, sometimes a rule of thumb gets you budget, other times even the most intelligent presentation as to the value of the investment of incremental budget alone might fall on deaf ears. So, feel free to use the 50-15 content investment rule of thumb or create your own.

We’re running the rule past other SEO and SEM experts, and we’ll continue to provide their feedback, along with more case studies and evidence that the rule is a good guideline for anyone who has ever wondered: How much content is enough? Feel free to include your experiences in the comments or share on Google +.

Give it 1/5

Give it 2/5

Give it 3/5

Give it 4/5

Give it 5/5