According to a study released last fall by search marketing authority, iProspect, investing in organic, or natural, search may be the most prudent use of your search marketing dollars. By a better than 3 to 1 margin marketers surveyed stated that organic search optimization led to a higher ROI than did paid search (e.g., pay-per-click ads on Yahoo! and Google). Be aware that these were marketers who participated in both paid & organic search optimization efforts and were able to track the results from both efforts. In point of fact, iProspect’s study determined that half of all marketers can’t tell which effort produces the better results.
An interesting bit of related research muddies the organic vs. paid search debate even further… Among the findings of Pew Internet and American Life they discovered that almost two-thirds of Internet users who have used search engines are unaware that sites have paid and unpaid results. I presume that these people clicked on whatever listing, paid search or organic results, that appealed to them most.
What should you do? My advice…do both. But as your efforts from organic search optimization begin to bear fruit, back off your paid search investment and position it more as a strategy to implement when introducing new products or services or researching the pulling power of new key words and phrases. Whatever you do, track your results. Without measurement you’ll have little clue as to what works and what doesn’t so take the time to put a basic tracking strategy in place. You’ll be glad you did.
Thanks for reading…
tom.gray@gemsolv.com
GeMSolv.com
