In the Balancing Paid & Organic Listings seminar, one presenter pointed out that on average, 82% of a search marketing budget is spent on paid search engine placement, while only 12% of the budget is spent on organic search engine optimization (SEO). The presenter went on to say that new research states that 25% of the people would click on paid search engine listings, 69% would click on organic/natural listings and 6% would click on other listings like news, local listings, etc. This led to a very poignant question. So why is 82% of a marketing budget generating 25% of the clicks?
This seems very logical to me. It’s much easier to pay for placement, and as a company, you have more control of your message. By paying for a search engine listing, you can control the ranking/display sequence of the ad, the copy used in the ad, and the URL the ad clicks to. In addition, the search engine listing is instantaneous, and you don’t have to wait for Google or any other search engine to index the page.
That said, prices companies are paying for paid listings are on the rise, and will continue to do so, and companies must find a way to spend more on organic search engine optimization (SEO). I believe that over time, as the market for paid search engine listings becomes even more saturated, companies will start to turn to organic SEO as an alternative. This is why you should want to balance your paid and organic spends now — you’ll be ahead of the competition when they decide to invest in organic SEO.
Also of note, although not new news per se, is that a recent Enquiro study released at SES NYC ‘05 found that Google searchers see the first few results on the page. A majority of the first listings on the page are natural results, underscoring the need for a good organic search engine optimization program.
