By Lydia Chen Shah, Director Marketing Communications
This blog post has been approved for the following audiences:
1. Those who have a natural search (SEO) campaign and do not employ Pay Per Click marketing services as part
of their marketing strategy.
2. Those who have Paid Search campaigns and do not currently use SEO in their Internet marketing.
3. Those who have Paid Search and SEO campaigns but do not have clarity on how the two types of search engine
marketing interact.
4. All marketing professionals wanting to learn more about the effect PPC and SEO have on each other and
conversion rates.
As marketers, we know there is exponential value in interdependent media as a user is exposed to additional events within a stream or funnel. But how much value exists? Does 1 + 1 = 3 when pay per click advertising and search engine optimization work together as part of an integrated online marketing strategy? Let’s check it out…
Excerpted from our white paper Proper Attribution: Looking Beyond the Last Click:
The following table shows actual conversion rates for a handful of our clients for PPC and SEO only and from users who responded to paid and organic search. This type of attribution reporting enables Internet marketers to make tremendously smarter decisions when the value and interaction between channels can be assigned. In all 5 client examples when a user responded to PPC and SEO but converted on SEO, the conversion rate was notably higher than PPC or SEO alone.
So, we guess the answer is simple: Does 1 + 1 = 3? NO, it is even better. As you can see from the chart above there is as high as a 9x increase in conversion rate for those who clicked on both Organic and Paid links.
Ask yourself: How much clarity do you have about how your PPC marketing and Search Engine Optimization campaign interact with each other? What about the lift they generate in conversions? Let’s throw on another layer while we’re at it. Latency. How long does it take for prospects to convert once they are exposed to an ad or a natural listing and what impacts that amount of time? That’s some of the fun stuff our team is tracking and analyzing now (can’t tell you everything!).
Lately, I have had way too much fun running PPC/SEO Attribution reports in our DSMM™ technology, comparing industries, established vs. emerging brands, lead generation vs. eCommerce websites...I can go on and on. The insight provided is a powerful demonstration of the appreciable and exponential value of the relationship between paid and natural search. It not only reinforces the fact that the two in conjunction can yield some serious damage (the good kind of damage) but helps marketers make much better decisions about investing in a marketing budget’s highest and best use.
PPC and SEO sittin’ in a tree…K-I-S-S-I-N-G…