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
-
Can you market to someone 30 days AFTER they visit your site via PPC?
Hi all, I'm looking to market to visitors 30 days AFTER they have been to a website. Their is a coupon this business wants to run every 30 days to its' repeat customers (and if they purchase again); thus, 30 days more will resume. I'm aware that your remarketing list can capture audiences from 30, 60, and 90 days past. I'm talking about future display ads running 30 days after visitor has cookies enabled. Thanks for your help! Cole
Paid Search Marketing | | ColeLusby0 -
Is there a tool that can use measure and improve the quality score of my PPC landing pages?
Hey guys, I'm trying to improve the quality score for a few of my PPC landing pages. Does any one know a Tool that can help me in the process. Something kind of like the "on page grader" but for quality score. Thanks
Paid Search Marketing | | Felip30 -
Adwords Search with Display select. Better ROI than just Adwords Search only?
What is your experience running Adwords Search with Display select? Are you getting a better ROI then just running Adwords Search only?
Paid Search Marketing | | marketvantageteam0 -
Does sitewide SEO affect PPC Quality Score?
When evaluating a PPC landing page for Quality Score, does Google evaluate the other pages that the landing page is linked to? For example, if we have a well optimized page on the site for "Widgets", can it outscore a well optimized PPC landing page that is isolated in a "disallow" directory with no links into or out of the page? I'm not sure if I am making myself clear...
Paid Search Marketing | | CsmBill0 -
Best UK PPC management company
I'm looking to outsource my PPC management and would love some feedback on which companies are worth paying for this service? I'm worried as there are so many cold calling scam artists out there and I want to choose the best company for the job. I have been considering "Adrac" as they only charge when they save you money! Sounds too good to be true so I'm automatically sceptical. Can anyone vouch for Adrac or suggest a better/different company?
Paid Search Marketing | | niallfred0 -
Could longtail keywords really produce up to 80% more organic traffic long-term?
I was listening to a podcast on site visibility's website and they were discussing www.hittail.com which is a piece of software which analyzes lists your
Paid Search Marketing | | whitbycottages
visitor stream in real-time and provides actionable list of precisely which
keywords the website should be targeting to dramatically grow your organic
search traffic using long tail key words. The say they can come up with a list of long tail keywords which the
website could easily rank for hopefully straightaway in the top five positions
on Google and other search engines by creating a blog post are some relevant
content. Or you could use the information to form some anchor text links etc They say it's possible to produce up to 80% more traffic organically
once you are aware of which keywords are being overlooked by the website and
then produce the relevant content. The theory is that most people focus on the high traffic short tail
keywords and overlook the long tail keywords and I got to admit I actually fall
into that category unfortunately. Anybody uses particular website? And what is your experience of targeting the
longtail keywords have they produce good results ?0 -
Proportion of traffic from adwords vs organic search
Hi People, I wanted to know if anyone knows what typical click through rates of paid vs organic search results are. We seem to be experiencing a very low click through rate with our organic search results versus our adwords and it seems to be getting worse. For example our website www.natureshop.co.uk ranks 4th for the search phrase "icebreaker" in google.co.uk (and we are the first online retailer). We are the first adwords listing as well. For the past 3 months we have had 867 clicks through our organic listing and yet with adwords we had 14,000 clicks. This seems pretty strange to me. Both have conversion rates of around 5%. Do you think these sorts of stats are becoming the norm for brand based searches? (icebreaker is a merino wool clothing brand). Adwords also says that there were around 125,000 impressions of this phrase in the search network for this period. Which means with a ranking of 4th our click through rate is less than 1%? If anyone else can share their experience or provide some commentary on this it would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance Conrad Cranfield
Paid Search Marketing | | ConradC0 -
Launching a PPC Campaign during the Holidays
Hi Mozzers- I have a client who is interested in running a PPC campaign. We are all setup to go...Here's my dilemma. The client provides moving services - household and commercial. I'm torn whether or not to launch the campaign during the holidays. Pros: We're not paying for impressions so it won't cost us any more $$. Cons: It probably won't show the best outcome over December - clicks/conversion. Thoughts? Pull the trigger and launch or wait until January? Thanks!
Paid Search Marketing | | lhc67
LHC0