A Staffordshire web design and search engine optimisation specialist has doubled turnover in the past 12 months as companies look to divert online advertising spend away from Google AdWords.

Newcastle-under-Lyme-based Nixia, which employs four people at their Lymedale Business Centre headquarters, has seen an increase in companies growing increasingly frustrated at the lack of response generated by their AdWords campaigns.

Managing Director Nick Green believes this sounds the death knell for companies using pay-per-click advertising campaigns to boost their website's performance in search engine rankings.

He said: "SEO used to be something of a black art, and it was difficult to win optimisation work because people didn't understand it and couldn't see a return on investment.

"AdWords allowed them to target certain search phrases and only pay for traffic which arrived on their website, so it was easier to understand and monitor.

"Now though everyone is doing it, and the extra competition has driven up the cost, and made it less effective on shorter phrases.

"So they are looking again at SEO because the response can be easily measured now, through Google Analytics, and they can see tangible results."

One of Nixia's clients - a holiday park in South Wales - has shifted £12000 of their AdWords marketing budget into SEO and social media, because they can generate better results organically.

They have since seen a 90% increase in the number of enquiries coming through their website.

Nick Green said: "It's possible to spend thousands of pounds of AdWords campaigns and not generate anything like the required return.

"One of our clients was spending £15000 a month on it! They were scared to stop because they relied on it for leads. We've achieved better results with a fraction of that.

"Companies will increasingly turn away from AdWords because it's now only really effective for niche markets and longer search phrases."