Organic Searches or PPC. Which Is Better
Which works better for actually making sales, PPC (pay-per-click ads) or Organic (actual listing in the search engine results pages)?
Organic search results are more trusted because they are not ads, but in Google AdWords and other PPC you get to write your own ad and target the viewers with specific keywords who will see your ad.
These two factors seem to almost balance out and give the same results. A study (during the first eight months of 2006 by WebSideStory) of 57 million views for 20 different business to consumer (B2C) websites showed an average sales conversion rate for PPC and organic listings of just under 3.5% for each.
Organic results converted slightly better at 3.4% vs. PPC at 3.1%.
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Comparing the top three positions in both PPC and organic results showed that the organic listings were clicked on 1.5 times more than the PPC listings.
What does all of this mean to you? Do BOTH is my conclusion. PPC is a great way to achieve top findings on the search engine while you wait for your orgainic searches to develop through good SEO work. Once you see top organic placements for keyword phrases, you can then remove some of your PPC ads and replace them with the more generic phrases if you wish.
Bonnie Burns SEO Director www.ecombuffet.com
