Through the years, I've been asked by many of my clients what the best way to advertise their business online is. Honestly, I was never really able to provide a solid answer to them.

A lot of my clients asked whether Google AdWords is going to help them generate more traffic to the site.

Here's my thought on online advertisement in general. First ask yourself, how many times in the past year have you clicked on one of those advertisements. Honestly, I have never clicked on anyone of them. Interestingly, majority of my clients' responses are similar to mine.

There are however, a small number of my clients responded that they click on those advertisement in some rare occasion. Now the question is how often do you click on them and when did you click on them.

Almost each and every one of them responded that they usually check out the ads only when they are not able to find anything relevant on the organic search results. This translates to search results on page 3 or beyond.

With most companies bidding on keywords and paying big bucks to get their ads to show up on the first page of the results, thinking that it is the best position for their ads. It is actually counter effective to pay the premium to have their result on the first page.

So to sum it up, online advertisement is not always the best solution. I think it is more important to write better content, code properly, and find ways to design your site so that it is useful for your visitors.

Categories: search, web