SEO and the mad rush to get those higher ranks on the search results pages cloud the fact this guarantees nothing. There is no certainty that anyone finding your listing will visit your site. Let alone that this will lead to conversions. In fact, there is every reason to believe that paid search converts better than organic results.

By conversions, I mean the objective of your site. A conversion can be a sign up to your newsletter, a White Paper download, a lead that you can follow up, a request for quote, or a direct sale of your products.

I also want to make the point that I am referring here to conversion rates and not necessarily to raw conversion numbers. With Google, for example, just over 70% of visitors choose the organic results first. But to get the Lion’s share of those clicks your site has to be in the top three. Anything below that, your CTR is likely to be just as good on pay per click.

So, there is every chance that PPC will get you not only a higher conversation rate but also a higher raw number of conversions.

The Problems with Organic Results

Organic results are out with your control. You can create a good description tag, but it doesn’t follow that the search engines will use this. Also, your site is often likely to show up for keywords for which you’ve written no description tags and so the SE’s make one up. And it’s not always to your best advantage.

With good SEO, you can help direct the search engines to pages deep inside your site, although there’s still no certainty over what pages the SE’s will use. In fact, most organic results point to the home page. And from the point of view of achieving conversions, this is rarely the best page. It then takes a bit of searching for the visitors to find what they’re looking for. Not a good start!

Indeed, when doing PPC management, it would be very unusual for me to use the home page as the landing page.

In addition, SERPs rankings are quite elastic. And where you appear on the results page is far from consistent and reliable.

Paid Search Is More Targeted

One key advantage of PPC advertising is position consistency. If you want your ad ranked number one then it’s possible to achieve that most of the time. You can certainly always make sure you appear on page one and you can manage your ranking within a selected range.

Another very important benefit is that you can choose the headline and wording that you want searchers to see. In addition, you can direct them to the page of your choosing. And, presumably, this is the page most likely to achieve conversions.

You can also test different landing pages and different aspects of the landing page. This could include the descriptions of your products, where you place them, your calls to action, etc. You cannot do any of this with organic search.

Visitor Intent

Another benefit of paid search is that it is much easier to capture visitor intent. By using the right mix of keywords, ads, and landing page, you can target visitors more effectively. This way, you can make your offer highly relevant to what the visitor is looking for with the search term they’ve used.

In organic search, the search engines define visitor intent. This removes the element of targeting and can reduce the effect of your listing. It can even make it seem irrelevant to the search.

Also, meeting visitor intent instantly is more likely to lead to faster conversions. With organic results, visitors are more likely to need a few visits to your site before acting.

The Upshot

It’s almost certain that paid search will produce a higher conversion rate than organic search. What’s more, chances are it will even get you more conversions in terms of raw numbers.


Tom Wilson is a specialist in PPC management. For more information on the relative benefits of paid search read his ppc blog at www.cluedup-ppc.co.uk.

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Filed under: Internet Marketing

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