There are two routes to get your brand’s website on the first page of Google Search results:
1. Organic Traffic – Your site appears naturally in Google search results because you have some compelling content with a little bit of SEO. Building a site that ranks well in organic search results requires effort and time but the traffic cost is absolutely zero.
2. Pay Per Click – When your site has a problem getting “organic” traffic for certain keywords, you try to buy that traffic through SEM (Google Ads). Unlike organic traffic which is free, here you have to pay each time a search visitor clicks on your link on the Google page.
Google Search Results Page
SEO vs. SEM
So should brands spend money on Pay-per-click advertisements to make their site visible in search engines or should they invest that marketing budget in building organic ranks for their website via search engine optimization?
Well, here’s a clue. A new report suggests that search visitors who land on retail websites by clicking on sponsored links are more likely to buy stuff than those who come via clicking on organic results.
And there’s more. The report also suggests that visitors who come to a site through PPC ads are more likely to spend more on that site.
If we were to apply this finding to our example above, Orbitz and PriceLine have better natural ranks in Google for the query “airline tickets” but the traffic to Yatra and MakeMyTrip could be converting better.
Find this article at: http://www.labnol.org/internet/per-per-click-vs-organic-google-traffic/9514/
Reader Comments
This is interesting. It’s hard to refute a real study, using real testing.
But, I think that the real test should be performed by the person involved in the business… and/or the person involved in designing the site and SEO.
Every web page on your site should have a goal, or a “call to action”… call you, make a comment, sign-up, click a link, etc. Using some tools from Google Analytics, you can track the success of your web site’s goals.
I won’t go into all the details, but it can even determine if your PPC visitors are following through on those calls to action.
Although a lot of other companies have similar tools, Google even has some tools that you can use to perform split testing.
Written by Fort Collin on 08.24.09
Amit,
A good article. But, the link to NY Times needs to be updated. It i pointing to .xml feed.
Cheers,
Aashish
Written by Aashish on 08.24.09
Amit Not always Orbitz and PriceLine are displayed at the top of the Google Search results.
Just now i tried the search with ‘airline tickets’. I’m surprised to see that Orbitz and PriceLine are not there in top 20.Instead Yatra occupy 1st place followed by Makemytrip .
Written by EchoBlogger on 08.24.09
This is really a great finding and article is really written very clean and in very informative manner. Probability of clicking ads or making purchase by a visitor defenitely drops from Search engine to social media to direct traffic and after reading your article on the tops of is reader from SEM
Written by Slym on 08.24.09
Very valid question.
I had asked the same question to many marketing people (vendors). Mostly they say SEM because there is good money going in and is easy in an execution standpoint.
But more and more people are getting used to avoid ads. They are visually familiar with google ads. What if the sponsored clicks/organic click ratio is 1/10000? To improve this ratio you need to shellout more and more money which will eventually won’t work out. But I agree that a user coming through a sponsored ad has more buying power (chance of converting).
My understanding is that the SEO line will be much cheaper and good in long run. You get one guy who will have job assignments like this:
60% Content improvement
40% Link building, community interactions.
This is just a general case. I personally know some specific niches where somebody sends thousand of dollars perday on AdWords because that’s the only way to survive. But that’s an exceptional case. Enjoying your articles.
Written by Arun Vijayan on 08.24.09
Amit, you have linked to an xml file in this article which ppl are unable to view on the browser.
Written by Prashant on 08.25.09
Amit,
It need not be either or choice. Both options have their own merit. Most importantly, one needs to check the available analytics data to come to a conclusion. Taking ‘this works better that’ argument on face value, without understanding the context, can prove dangerous in the worst case.
Written by Shashi on 08.25.09
I think it’s depends on the site and the niche. Get rich quick schemes might not find many takers but if, say, a yatra or a makemytrip advertises on adsense, people would buy from them.
Written by Sharninder on 08.25.09
SEM would work in certain cases because they are geographically targeted while organic results are globally similar, so for Indians Yatra and MMT.com are more useful
Written by Gautam on 08.25.09
Gautam – Even the organic results in Google are geographically targeted. For instance, if you do a search for “bank” in US (google.com) and repeat the same search in India (google.co.in), you’ll get different results. In the case of “airline tickets”, Orbitz and Priceline probably have something of interest for the Indian audience as well and hence they may be showing up at the top.
Written by Amit on 08.25.09
This study is hogwash. Anybody who tries to tell you that paying for search engine traffic will give you better roi is trying to sell you something…
Written by Christopher Philo on 08.28.09