If I had to choose between getting natural search traffic via google searches or paid traffic via google adwords, I would choose natural or “free” traffic in a heartbeat. Why pay up to $25 per click or more for visitors to come to your website when you can have people visit your site without paying anything?

You could certainly try to skip paid search ads all together and focus your entire strategy on SEO (search engine optimization) for natural search listings. However, certain keywords can be very difficult to achieve a high ranking on for various reasons. For example, lets say you are a local insurance agent in Cincinnati and you want to collect life insurance leads on your website. A quick search for the keyword “life insurance” yields the following results.

Google Search for the keyword Life Insurance

Google Search for the keyword Life Insurance

The top 6 natural search results are metlife.com, prudential.com, lifeinsurancerates.com, newyorklife.com, money.cnn.com, and colonialpenn.com. Pretty steep competition. These are national companies and the chances for your local insurance agency appearing in the “free” search top 6 are slim to none.

This is where Google adwords becomes the great equalizer. Anyone with a relevant ad who is willing to pay the asking price can appear in the top 6 paid ad results that appear highlighted at the top of the search listings and continue down the right side of the page. Furthermore, it is easy to target your ad so that it only appears in the locality of your choosing. So if your agency is located in Cincinnati, your ad will only show to people located in Cincinnati who search using the keyword “life insurance.” A quick check on Google adwords shows that paid clicks average between $8 and $25 per click when targeted locally to Cincinnati. These are not cheap clicks, and you will certainly want to spend time continually narrowing your campaign to weed out any unwanted clicks.  However, you do have an opportunity to have your local agency website shown on the first page for a keyword that draws in fierce national competition.

It is important to consider the relevant keywords for your business and decide on an appropriate marketing strategy based upon those keywords. A local insurance agency will not be able to compete in the natural search listings for many of the main “high traffic” keywords and shouldn’t waste any effort trying to do so. However, a highly targeted Google adwords campaign may provide an opportunity to drive relevant traffic to your conversion page for a price.

On a related note, an alternative strategy that may allow you to still benefit from “free” Google traffic would be to focus on a unique brand name and then build brand awareness in your local area. Pick a unique or unusual brand name that does not already have competition on Google. If your name is unique enough, it will be easy to quickly gain the top “free” search listing in Google. Then you can run a local campaign to build brand awareness and associate your brand with something like “life insurance.” The key will be to get more and more people typing in your brand name instead of life insurance when they are shopping for life insurance on Google.