Is ppc becoming more influential than organic search with consumers?
-
Simply put, are consumers clicking on ppc in lieu of organic search. In the past, people use to say that ppc accounted between 30-40% of traffic with organic accounting for majority of activity. My question is whether those numbers have changed, and if so, where are we now?
A friend in Boston in does SEO, remarked that many of her 'sophisticated' friends didn't know the difference between ppc and organic. Seems odd, but with the move to place ppc results from the right hand sidebar to the top left hand column, certainly gives it more presence and makes the separation between ppc vs. organic less distinct.
I certainly understand the value of doing both, but depending on the answer, it begs the question... is the expense of moving up a position or two in organic worth the effort and monies, if ppc is becoming the dominant raffic tdriver?
Anybody have any recent statistics on ppc vs. organic?
Thanks.
-
Thanks Joel. I have a laptop and at times, the distinction between google adwords and organic seems faint. Nevertheless... I think you're right. To the unsophisticated, not sure they make note of the differences, when they don't know there's a difference in results. I agree... there's good synergy when you can get ppc and organic working...as they say in real estate...location, location, location... when you see those results repeatedly on the same page... it has impact. Thanks.
-
Thanks Saijo. I somewhat agree. The distinction between organic and ppc, now that ppc has moved to the top left side from the olden days of just being on the right hand sidebar... blurs the differences. Thanks.
-
I have no data to draw the conclusion from but I get how more users might click on PPC especially the ones on top of the SERPs . Would be interesting to see if anyone has some stats on these.
-
Thanks for your response. We've invested many years in SEO successfully. One interesting change over the past year is that the traffic has dropped for some KW phrases without any change in rankings in Google. In some cases, these are terms sitting at #1 or #2. I think the demarcation between PPC and organic is becoming harder to distinguish and given the naivete of many consumers... many assume the listings are one and the same. If I'm right, it means that a higher percentage of searches are pulling from sponsored links than organic compared to the past. Is there any data or research to negative or support this assumption? Thanks. Alan
-
It may not be that it's becoming more influential, it may be that ppc is taking up more screen real estate and pushing organic listings further down the page.
See: http://www.seobook.com/paid-inclusion
Here’s a quick rundown on what we’ve been doing for Synergy
SEO
We recently performed a comprehensive site audit (<a>\GREEN\S-clients\Synergy\SEO Audit\Synergy SEO Recommendations.docx</a>) which identified the following issues / recommendations:
Fix duplicate content
Fix broken internal links
Optimise title tags
Create an xml sitemap
Update Google Analytics tracking code
Verify for Google Webmaster Tools
Once implemented our recommendations will lead to better search engine indexation, higher rankings and increase organic search traffic.
SEM
We’ve recently refined a number of advertising campaigns which have led to:
Increases in online account signups
Increases in online direct debit signups
Subsequently reducing the workload of the client’s internal resources.
We continue to work towards improving the number of conversions at a lower cost per conversion.
FYI, last month’s SEO and SEM reports can be found here: <a>\GREEN\Q-Admin\Production Management\Site Marketing\Clients\Synergy\Reporting</a>
-
Bing actually has an off white color for the ppc ads versus a white color for organic which makes them blend in together. This is great for the ads because it can cause confusion. So the margin is closer here.
Google still differentiates the two enough that most people notice the difference. People still favor organic results unless they are looking for a brand that is in the ppc section.
Note: It is great to be both on the ppc ad and organic results. You have greater branding potential and people will most often click the organic result vs the ad.
-
Its like comparing Apples to Mangoes really . If you are having client who seems to be confused .. you should educate them about what each of them offers.
With organic you need to invest time and effort and the results will take time .. With PPC you get value based on the Money you put it ( that is not to say there is no time / effort put in to it ) and can be used for quick wins.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
PPC Long tail keywords
I was wondering feedback and input on creating long tail keywords associated with a question. With addition a landing page that addresses that problem with a few products. Using PPC to bid on long tail keywords, I would set a campaign for long tail keywords and have multiple ad groups with a close knit and similar sentences like "Top 10 highest rated summer dresses" and "Popular dresses for the summer weather." My landing page would address the question with a list of products like a buzz feed article format. 1. As it is on a subdomain blog with an add to cart feature, would interlink building be helpful in exchanging link juice. 2. Bidding on a long tail keyword is cheaper, but will they result in higher conversions since its hyper-specific question? And since it is a long tail keyword sentence. 2-3 smaller keywords between the sentence would also pick up on to Google search?
Paid Search Marketing | | petmkt0 -
PPC for Luxury Goods Website
Hi Mozzers, I am starting a PPC campaign for a website that sells high-end products. The search volume for the generics is very high but I think the conversion rate on those will be quite low given the price of the products. Does anyone have any experience in doing PPC for high-end retailers and what type of keyword I should be bidding on? Thanks!
Paid Search Marketing | | KarlBantleman0 -
PPC Keyword list
Hi Im embarking on a PPC campaign targeting one single product that we sell. I am compiling a key word list just now and was just wondering if there is a maximum number of keywords i should be looking to target for this? Thanks in advance
Paid Search Marketing | | TheZenAgency0 -
Youtube ad video ppc
anyone has any experience with youtube for adwords and how its converting, etc? tips on how to really narrow it down to keyword level and making sure impressions are based on your preferences? Thanks
Paid Search Marketing | | PaulDylan0 -
Wordwatch Software: PPC Adwords campaign managers heard of, tried, or actively using this?
I've been trialing WordWatch for about a month. I'll admit I've been skeptical from the start. I don't quite understand the results they're delivering or how it works. So I did a search for "Wordwatch review" hoping someone out there could shed some light or help me decide whether this software was worth keeping. But all I can find are two suspicious and badly written posts, immediately raising red flags. (Penuguin should have eliminated crap sites using the Flesch-Kincaid reading level, but I digress.) **Wordwatch premise: **They take over keyword bidding to maximize budgets and clicks. They monitor the Adwords campaign to find an "optimal" bid price. Two questions about this premise: How is it different than using the Google settings for optimize for clicks or conversions? Since Google Adwords is based on a Vickery auction, wouldn't lowering my bid only lower my position? Bearing everyone has the same QS, then lowering my bids to the range between 2 positions does not increase my actual cost. I have Wordwatch enabled for a few of my campaigns. Their interface leaves a lot to be desired. They don't report the activity or the changes they make to the campaigns from the dashboard. I had to go into my Adwords Change History to track what they were doing. And lo and behold they're also adding long tail keywords to my ad groups. Bottom line I didn't notice any huge impact, and I don't see how it's better than Google's own version of campaign settings. I don't know that they're really legit. But their marketing was so convincing, and they raised $1.4M that I need other opinions. Any one with some pro/cons, or yay/nays?
Paid Search Marketing | | flowsimple0 -
Best keyword traffic analysis tool for long tail search terms?
Please bare with me, this might turn into a bit of a waffle, but I'll get to my question... I promise! I've just been looking at our CPC traffic for April and 2 search terms jumped out at me. I recognised them from previous keyword research because they are search terms that I expected to be high traffic (from past experience), but Google Adwords keyword tools showed them to have no potential traffic, and next to no potential traffic (literally 0 local searches and 12 local searches per month). Last month search term A had 46 visits, with 19:25 average time on site and 8.70% bounce rate and search term B had 10 visits with 14:47 average time on site and 0% bounce rate. For very boring reasons we are not currently able to measure conversions on these terms since (they are related to consumer finance and when a customer applies for finance it is all done on our finance providers website) but despite the low volume, these are pretty good figures for on site behaviour and so it got me thinking... Is there a more accurate tool to estimate traffic volume that we should be using rather than the Adwords tools? I appreciate that the estimates are probably made based on historic search behaviour and April's traffic could just be a one off, but these particular terms used to be insanely popular 4-5 years ago when I worked at a competing company.
Paid Search Marketing | | DWJames1 -
PPC Keyword Ranking
The SEOmoz PRO tool shows how keywords rank in the organic part of the SERPs. Does anyone know if there is another tool out there that shows the same thing for ranking in the ads section of the SERPs? Also, does anyone know the winning lottery numbers (any lottery will do, I'm not fussy!). Thanks Neil
Paid Search Marketing | | mccormackmorrison0