Adwords verse Natural Index

[Incubator]

Hello, I was wondering if anyone could share some info.

I was looking for a comparison document that compares a number 1 position in adwords compared to the number 1 position in natural index search (regardless of keyword/phrase) for clicks


Cheers

Wayne

[seobook]

I think Jupiter Research stated at the NYC SES conference that 5 out of 6 commercial purchases which originate from search originate from the organic listings. that is about as much as I know though.

there are a ton of variables though and changing your url or writing a better ad can easily double or triple ad clickthrough rate.

[Incubator]

Thanks for the input SEOBOOK, I thought the ratio would be high.

It would be very interesting to find any analytics run by Google themselves out any trending or conversion factors...... thats jsut a hope though :)

cheers

Wayne

[AussieWebmaster]

There have been a few white papers on this subject... I will look and post links.. but basically most seem to go with the organic doing better...
Personally I have a bunch of terms sitting at number one for organic results and I also take the number one spot for PPC...
In my financial sector the clicks are far heavier on the PPC side, but the organic seems to have a higher conversion rate... only a little... but it does get less clicks than the PPC.

[andrewgoodman]

Ok, those data sound plausible on the surface... now good luck getting to the top of the organic listings on a popular term with your commercial site, post-Florida. :D

If you're sellin' stuff, use AdWords. It won't hurt a bit. :cool:

[seobook]

good luck getting to the top of the organic listings on a popular term with your commercial site, post-Florida. :D

actually Google is rather easy to manipulate again. they undid or refined most of the Florida stuff (I think because it was killing relevancy).

[Jeff Martin]

Here is a short and sweet study Clickz covered:
http://www.clickz.com/stats/big_picture/applications/article.php/3348071

Strictly speaking for Adwords less than 28% of users preferred ads and thought they were relevant. The trend broke down like this as to what users favored:

Engine----Org------PPC
____________________
Google.....72.3%....27.7%
Yahoo!.....60.8%...39.2%
AOL..........50%......50%
MSN.........21.8%...71.2%

To sum it up: Have a combined SEO/PPC campaign and some overlap.

[andrewgoodman]

It is pretty easy for a discussion like this to degenerate into specious arguments about the value of SEO "over" PPC.

The fact that users say they prefer one type of result over another tells us very little, IMHO.

And the fact that it's nice to get organic traffic -- something we can all agree on -- still tells me little about the nature of the exercise, except I have a sneaking suspicion that black hats do about as well as white hats based on their own definitions of success, whereas the white hats who do less optimizing also succeed, also on their terms.

Where it breaks down for me is when Fredrick M. states that it's a must for companies to focus on SEO and to put "very hard work" into it. There is this myth that there is a correlation between all this hard work and higher rankings. When you pay attention to anything, especially if starting from a low base, it can improve. But it levels off, and if you're already doing what you should be doing, you may already be at the limit of what you can achieve through SEO.

In highly competitive fields, many companies have virtually no hope of gaining significant organic traffic, repeat: virtually no hope. Clinging to that slim hope for years because SEO is judged to be "better than" PPC can cost time and money.

I love organic traffic. Don't we all? But optimization is not the rocket science we sometimes make it out to be, and more importantly, Google, not site owners, has final say about where you rank. All the "hard work" in the world won't change that.

As it happens, most people's positions on these issues seem to be a mere function of where their bread is buttered.

But there is no harm in specializing in one type of marketing. Companies have every right to use different in-house people or different vendors for different projects if they wish. After all, why are we focusing just on SEM? Couldn't someone come along with a subjective study that people "prefer" some other kind of advertising, and then we'd have to admit that ad agencies are better than SEM agencies?

My point, I guess, is that there is often an attempt being made to "prove" the point that "organic is better for companies to show up in." That seems to be an outmoded assumption. The search engines themselves have a much more sophisticated view of this, and the whole Florida / invisible tabs / and other developments are increasingly being brought to bear on that organic search. Certain types of commercial queries are quite simply better off placed in the commercial section of the SERP's, and *should not* show up in the organic listings. And "content" does not always lead directly to a sale.

Look at any page of organic results on a number of Google queries for things like "kites," or "lawn care new jersey." Tell me honestly without referring to some questionable study: is organic search really "all that"? Did this #1 result for "lawn care new jersey," which appears to be from a government agency, need an "SEO company" to achieve that position?

What about this horrid #2 result for "lawn care new jersey"? http://www.find-information-on.com/new_jersey/lawn-care.php

A keyword-stuffed, SEO-fueled, monetizing nightmare of a spam page. Increasingly this "left hand side of the page" seems like a sandbox that I would not want to play in.

Do the available studies purporting to show the value or user interest in organic results vs. PPC results really give us a true sense of how users are behaving, or does it vary wildly from query to query?

I can only hope that the next wave of personalization will improve the status of the organic side. It is currently nothing to shout about, and users are soon going to realize this. With the advent of personalization and cool dials and sliders to tweak your own search results, there will be even less causal relationship between the effort put into "optimization" and one's rankings in the average user's organic results.

[AussieWebmaster]

Well said Andrew.

Obviously you follow the current guidelines for optimization when you design a page. Work on keeping it current, but the PPC venue offers more simple monetized results and deserves major attention. The rules of that game are pretty straight forward and may need more attention than optimization.

I see working on the landing pages to improve conversion another factor that influences the optimization efforts.

[Jeff Martin]

The fact that users say they prefer one type of result over another tells us very little, IMHO.

I have to say, IMHO, that a detialed study of witnessing users search habits as they are searching is absolutely priceless. I myself have conducted numerous labs, from search habits to usability and it has always led to a greater understanding.

As every engine's interface is different, and studies show what users favor is different for each engine, it is best to have a combined campaign to cover your bases. :)