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
-
Gap in Google PPC Ads & Organic search results - New test by Google?
Hi All, Just noticed an unusual gap in PPC ads and organic search results in google NZ. while searched the same term in Google AU, it wasn't the same. Did anyone here see something similar? Is this a new test by Google to get more clicks on PPC ads and pushing down organic results? Looking forward to hear from the community. Cheers, Rattan wcB6DL1.jpg
Paid Search Marketing | | FRL0 -
Baidu PPC Agency Recommendations
I have a client that is a perfect fit for the Chinese market, but have had issues with reseller agencies that don't really know what they are doing. Does anyone have any agency recommendations? I am only spending a few grand a month.
Paid Search Marketing | | JerrodDavid0 -
PPC - Fixing the campaign so ads always rank in positions 1 - 3
Hi everyone, I have more of a SEO background than a PPC one so excuse me if this question seems simple. I have inherited a Google Adwords campaign and want to accomplish the following Fix the campaign so the ads only appear in positions 1 – 3. The campaign came with a relatively good structure. Is there some way I can fix the settings to accomplish this? Conversion rates are high but quality scores vary from 6 -10 Thanks
Paid Search Marketing | | Carla_Dawson0 -
PPC software.. which one do you think is better? why?
hey guys... I am trying to figure out the best way of doing PPC. I dont want waste money doing it the less effective way. So far I have been looking at Acquisio and wordstream.. I am not sure which would be best for me or if there is other options that would be even better. I am in house in charge of 2 ecommerce websites.
Paid Search Marketing | | Felip30 -
Will a javascript rewrite of city names on a home page from PPC traffic affect SEO negatively?
We have a client that was originally based out of Orlando and the entire website is SEO'ed for Orlando. In the long term we will start SEO'ing for Tampa. But In the short term, we want to drive traffic from Tampa to the website but we want that traffic to know the business specializes in Tampa service (he has local teams there). We are already using a ?_vsrefdom=changemynumber to change the phone number dynamically to a tampa area code for tracking purposes. We want to dynamically change all iterations of 'Orlando' with 'Tampa' using the same javascript. Does this cause any SEO problems or trip any alarms with Google?
Paid Search Marketing | | Highforge0 -
Yahoo Showing Adwords URLS in Organic Results
a client is getting adwords campaign url's showing up high in the SERPs, like 2 spots under the original page. The actual unique page is number one, and number three is the same page except the url is pulled from and adwords click My guess is that yahoo is crawling adsense and mistakenly following it as a link. It's crazy that it ranks on the 3rd page though... At the same time I have recently seen 25 pages deindexed in Google! How could this happen - could these two be related. I read this forum post about similar things happening in yahoo to their site Could this be a duplicate content issue (copyscape is showing no duplicate content) or are my pages getting indexed for some other reason?
Paid Search Marketing | | imageworks-2612900 -
SEOMOZ of PPC?
Hi The site I'd been following over the years last updated in May, so it's clearly not the authority it once was, I know there's a PPC post here about once a month but I was wondering where do the PPC brigade spend most of their time? My work is 50/50 atm but was once much more PPC focused, is there an SEOMOZ equiv. in the Paid Search world?
Paid Search Marketing | | xoffie0 -
PPC Management Software Recommendations?
What is your favorite PPC Mgmt software? I was looking over my options and wanted to see if anyone has any recommendations? I've always done this manually but would like to find software that can allow my bids to put me (for example) in the third place position on Microsoft adCenter. Thanks,
Paid Search Marketing | | celife
Chris0