2 Comments

PPC and SEO Conversions Running Neck and Neck

Sep 25, 2006
by

Let the trumpets sounds – again – about which converts better.

Is it PPC or SEO?

PPC has a slight edge, according to a new study by WebSideStory, Inc., which looked at more than 57 million search engine visits this year. Paid advertising had a median order conversion rate of 3.40 percent at B2C e-commerce sites compared to an organic conversion rate of 3.13 percent.

Ali Behnam, Senior Digital Marketing Consultant for WebSideStory, said in a news release: “In the case of paid search, marketers have better control over the environment, including the message, the landing page and the ability to eliminate low-converting keywords.”

Conversion opportunities vary with the product types, time of year, site architecture, product descriptions, purchase incentives, prices, brand and countless other factors.

Natural search, for example, is limited in part by what a search engine specialist can pull off without wearing a black hat or disrupting the user experience (i.e. beffing up content in unusual ways).

While monitoring conversions, natural search specialists should be paying close attention to the page cache trends. By working with Web analytics data and frequently cached product pages – even for one major search engine – they can implement and evaluate subtle changes to page titles, visible text and more.

Ultimately, they can improve search engine visibility and ultimately conversions for the right products at the right time – assuming it’s a product worth buying in the first place.

Filed under: Search Engine Marketing
  • http://www.affiliate-software-review.com Peter Koning

    Good point. However new merchants might be inclined to head off to spend some PPC and not think of organic SEO when they read this.

    If you stop blowing the trumpets for sec, you’ll hear the crickets over at the PPC ditch. That’s the sound of the traffic…and that distant roar is the traffic on the organic SEO road nearby.

    i.e. it’s not just about the conversion, it’s also the traffic.

  • http://www.fathomseo.com Mike Murray

    Thanks for the perspective; I hope they spend both. Talking to a client now who thinks you stop spending PPC when rankings reach a “certain point.” I imagine you define that ranking level based on the keyword/phrase. For inexpensive PPC keywords, it’s not really a problem to grab traffic from both PPC and SEO.