How much it costs to promote a site on Google in Italy? In this article you will find almost everything you need to know about:

• Costs of promotion on Google

• Types of promotion

• Recommendations for efficiency

Important: SEO or Google Ads?

Related to the cost of promoting on Google, there are two different types of campaigns as a way of approach and costs.

You could have campaigns where you improve the site to reach the first organic positions on Google Search. This is SEO - it can be done either by calling a specialized company / SEO expert or it can be done internally with a dedicated employee / team.

And you could design campaigns where you promote your website by giving money directly to Google (that is, you buy advertising from Google) - it's called Google Ads.

SEO

The cost of promoting a website on Google with SEO
(by optimizing it)

Here, the costs of promotion with SEO are calculated a little differently than Ads.

Let's say you have a new site, and you want to attract a lot of traffic from Google. For this, you must be in the top positions for certain searches. The higher your site`s position is, and the expressions are searched a lot, the more traffic you have.

So far, all good and beautiful. Let's say you are 1st on Google Search in organic results.

Question: What happens to everyone who was on the first page of Google before you appeared?

Answer: basically, you sent EVERYONE with one position down.

Question: let's say that the first position is Auto.it, or Tigershop.it, or Unieuro, or Fiat, or other very large companies.

Do you think it's easy to take them down? Do you think they want to be taken down by anyone? Do you think they are not investing money to stay where they are and maybe even grow?

So:

The cost of Google's natural traffic (SEO) is directly proportional to the power and amounts spent by your competitors, who are also trying to attract as much traffic.

What does this mean? That if you are a small / medium sized company you have no chance?

Wrong. You're in luck. But only if you fight intelligently.

The logic is as follows. Automobile.it - for example - it's a very big site. It has about 240 thousand pages on Google.

For certain searches, on the first page of Google may appear www.automobile.it or the page www.automobile.it/km0 - thats if we search for in Google "automobile km0", "new automobile".

Basically, if we are a store that sells new autos, we don't fight with all the Automobile.it,  or the home page of the site, but we fight with the dedicated page on the Automobile.it for new automobiles.

It may seem like a technical difference, but it is the difference between success and failure when promoting on Google.

Automobile.it, or even Amazon, have big budgets, but they can't have dedicated pages for everything.

What we need to do to "be better than" Automobile.it is to find those expressions (keywords) for which Automobile.it either does not have dedicated pages or has, but, are not very powerful and can be exceeded.

If we choose to fight directly with the pag of Automobile.it`s new autos, then ... good luck. You will need it.

That is why I said that you must choose your battles intelligently, because otherwise you will not be very successful. Obviously, you probably won't be the only ones - there will be others who are trying the same thing.

A very general estimate of the costs of promoting a site on Google with SEO:

- for weak competitors or very specific expressions - several hundred euros / expression.
- for average competitors or expressions with average searches - between several hundred and several thousand euro / expression
- for big competitors or big expressions - from thousands of euro up / expression. (think about you are struggling with companies that have SEO departments with dedicated employees)

GOOGLE ADS
(formerly Google AdWords)

The cost of promoting a site with Google Ads

Important:
If you use Google Ads, I have to specify something: here you pay for clicks, impressions, acquisitions, and video campaigns, search, display, campaigns for apps, shoppping ads. Theoretically, you can promote your products and services on Google with 1 euro. You will probably take a single click and most likely you will not get rich with it, but there really is no minimum cost.

So how do you calculate the costs?

Google Ads is a "classic" way of advertising. You spend for advertising, visitors are coming. You stop to spend, visitors dont come. That simple.

What is very important here is that the amount spent should be less than the amount won. That said, by this way you "buy" customers from Google. The cost you pay for a client must be lower than the profit you get from that client.

Why is it important and why do I insist on this?

Because the cost of promoting a site on Google with Google Ads is VERY HIGH. Google Ads cost a lot. It's expensive.

There are many companies that do not recover their costs. Not everyone can make a profit here, not every product can be successfully sold here. This is very important. I will detail further on this in next paragraphs.

Now, how much does it cost to effectively promote a site through Google Ads (paid advertising on Google)

To estimate a cost are two main variables:

1. how many people are searching on Google those expressions for which you want to pay (to be displayed).
2. how much your competitors give to be displayed - not you - on those expressions.

How can you estimate how many monthly searches there are? (generally, monthly searches are used) Here, even Google is helping you.

You need to sign up for Google Ads and access the Google Keyword Planner. You must create a Google Ads account, but you do not have to actually pay money or start advertising. However, you will have a limitation if you do not pay. You will only have approximations - between 100 and 1000 searches per month. (that is, nothing in this world is truly free)

Look for the words for which you want to attract traffic and see how many searches are.

Whatever you do, no matter how you pay, not everyone will click on your ad / ads. Just a small part. Starts estimating from 5%. It's a very, very reasonable estimate.

Example: If your words have about 10,000 (ten thousand) searches each month, it is reasonable to approximate that you will attract about 5% of them. I mean, somewhere around 500 clicks.

The figure may increase or decrease much, but we enter into another complete topic: the optimization of a campaign. This is not the purpose of this article.

Now, there's another variable. HOW MUCH you pay per click.

Here, the approximation starts from 1 euro. There are areas where a click costs less (0.2 - 0.3 €) but also areas where a click costs significantly more (10-20 €).

It matters a lot how much money you make in that field and how many competitors there are. And here can be told a lot, but the simplest is to go on 3 scenarios:

low cost estimate - about 0.4 euro / click
average / general estimate - about 1 euro / click
high estimate - 7 euro/ click.

The vast majority of businesses in ITALY fall somewhere between 0.4 and 7 €, but there are cases with higher costs depending especially on  your industry (it is Advocacy or Technology or Health & Medical, and so on).

That is, if there are 10,000 searches per month for your business, a Google ads campaign could cost you somewhere between 200 EUR (500 x 0.4) and 3500 EUR (500 x 7).

It may be even more if you want to force a larger market share, but the amount above is an ESTIMATE from which you can start.

Do you remember I said that not everyone can sell anything through Google ads and that it is an expensive way to promote?

The logic on Google ads is not how much you can spend, but how sustainable and efficient you are to spend.

That's because ultimately, not all of your products will prove to be marketable, not all words will prove profitable. In general, it starts from the above estimate, after which some can be eliminated - products that are not sold, words that do not bring you profit, and so on.

Finally, most of the times, the cost of an effective Google ads campaign is significantly lower than the initial costs. Most often lower than 1/3 of the first cost.

Why so little? Because PROFITABLE on Google Ads is not to sell to anyone. That's impossible. PROFITABLE means to identify very precisely those to whom you can sell certain products of yours and to focus ONLY on those products and those searches.

Conclusion

SEO and Ads could help you to gain more visitors and sales from a population of about 60 millions inhabitants from regions (regioni) of Italy, including Metropolitan Cities (città metropolitane d'Italia) Rome Roma, Milan Milano, Naples Napoli, Turin Torino, Palermo Palermo, Bari Bari, Catania Catania, Florence Firenze, Bologna Bologna, Genoa Genova, Venice Venezia, Messina Messina, Reggio Calabria Reggio Calabria, Cagliari Cagliari:

• Abruzzo with the capital L'Aquila
• Aosta Valley (Valle d'Aosta) with the capital Aosta
• Apulia (Puglia) with the capital Bari
• Basilicata with the capital Potenza
• Calabria with the capital Catanzaro
• Campania with the capital Naples (Napoli)
• Emilia-Romagna with the capital Bologna
• Friuli-Venezia Giulia with the capital Trieste
• Lazio with the capital Rome (Roma)
• Liguria with the capital Genoa
• Lombardy (Lombardia) with the capital Milan (Milano)
• Marche with the capital Ancona
• Molise with the capital Campobasso
• Piedmont (Piemonte) with the capital Turin (Torino)
• Sardinia (Sardegna) with the capital Cagliari
• Sicily (Sicilia) with the capital Palermo
• Trentino-South Tyrol (Trentino-Alto Adige) with the capital Trento
• Tuscany (Toscana) with the capital Florence
• Umbria with the capital Perugia
• Veneto with the capital Venice