SEO as Effective as Paid Search, Study Says
Monday, September 25th, 2006 | by Rajan Sodhi | 
3 Comments |
This post appeared on E-consultancy.com and reports an interesting study by WebSideStory that indicates paid search is only slightly more effective than optimisation when it comes to conversion rates. I’ve been very active in utilizing both strategies in my work and I’m convinced that pursuing an effective SEO program is very worthwhile and cost-effective. You can read the posting here:
The research, which focused on 20 major B2C sites over the first eight months of this year, basically suggests that neither paid or organic search advocates are right to claim their methods are better.
It shows PPC keywords bought from search engines had a median order conversion rate of 3.40% between January and August, compared to a rate of 3.13% for organic search results.
“With conversion rates 50% higher than overall site conversion rates, both paid and organic search remain a very important acquisition source for online marketers,” said Ali Behnam, senior digital marketing consultant for WebSideStory.
“However, it is important to note that these are not typical results. Our clients are steeped in web analytics best practices and understand better than most how to truly optimise their search engine marketing campaigns and conversion rates.”
The analytics company studied around 57 million search engine visits during the period, and counted order conversions that occurred during the same session.
3 Comments
September 26th, 2006 at 7:42 pm
[...] Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is so often kicked around and many times misunderstood. Business people and marketers actively using the web as a source for promoting their products knows of it, but not all are sure how to “optimize” their site. Now I’m no SEO guru, but I’ve had a bit of experience working with SEO programs and have attended a few conferences on the topic, including the recent AdTech show in San Francisco which I found invaluable. The common question is, “How the hell do I get my site to rank high on Google?” Ranking high on Google means having your site appear on the first page when a user on the net types a keyword relative to your business. This is referred to as a “natural” search, as oppose to a “paid” search where you pay Google for your text ad to appear each time your choosen keyword is typed in. A recent study that I blogged about (refer to SEO As Effective as Paid Search, Study Says) found that natural searches were just as effective in generating lead traffic as paid searches. To me, this further underlines the importance of adopting SEO practices. [...]
October 19th, 2006 at 12:27 am
[...] HitTail.com measures all keywords used to find your site, and provides you in real-time with your top 10 keywords, along with the Long Tail of less popular keywords. These less popular keywords are than provided as suggestions for you to decide whether or not you want to write about on your web site. I like this service and truly believe the best searches are the natural ones, not paid. It’s easy to blow your brains spending money on adwords. But, as in a recent study I blogged about (refer to SEO as Effective as Paid Search, Study Says), natural searches proved to be at least as effective if not more effective than paid searches. I highly recommend you begin using HitTail.com while it’s still free. [...]
April 12th, 2007 at 8:43 am
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