Which is More Important for Business: Organic or Paid Search Results?

Every time you type in keywords on the search tab, Google and the like return two types of results: organic and paid. The first one consists of web listings that are closest to one’s query in terms of relevance, while the second one are advertisements that websites and companies spend on in order for them to appear on the results page whenever their selected keywords are typed in by a user.

But which one is actually more helpful for businesses? First we must recognize the difference between #OrganicSEO and #paidsearch.

While paid ones are separated from natural results in that paid ones are mostly found at the top of the page - giving them visual priority - the latter is nonetheless more essential in the long-term. It’s also helpful to know that the target audience for these two is usually different: Natural SEO is aimed at people who are looking for information, while the other one usually attracts buying customers who already know what they want prior to making a query.

 Image From: http://inntaonlinesolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Googles-Organic-and-Paid-Search-Results.png

Both are of course important when you’re running a large-scale business. But know that if you’re actually spending lots on PPC advertising without managing proper SEO techniques for organic traffic to your site, you are essentially losing money with every passing minute.

Recent studies show that over 90% of web users prefer to use organic search results, and only 6% of them actually revert to PPC ads on the page. This is because users are keen to recognize that clicking on paid results means that a company will be pitching a sale.

Let us put that into numerical perspective. Say you are in top position for certain keywords which elicit about 100,000 searches a month. With that, your site should obtain around 80,000 visits. If your website has been created with proper SEO strategies from the beginning, then your optimum traffic to lead conversion rate should be 15%. Multiply 80,000 by 15%, and you get 12,000 monthly leads.

In the PPC perspective on the other hand, one would need to spend on the average about $1.06 to get traffic to lead conversion of only 5.3% - way below what you’d get if you use natural SEO. So to obtain 12,000 monthly leads with that conversion, it would require more than 226,000 visits. If we multiply by $1.06, you’d have to spend around $250,000 to acquire 12,000 conversions.

If you are seeking benefits for the long-term, then a well-optimized site is the way to go. Of course PPC also provide instant traffic and helps improve your visibility, but all your efforts to market effectively will go to naught if natural search strategies are not in place to begin with.

How to Avoid Keyword Cannibalism

Have you ever written a fresh, high quality article in hopes of it ranking high up in search engines, only to find out later that another post from your other domains or social media accounts rank higher than the original post? 

    Image From: http://techlunatic.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Keyword-Cannibalism-In-Google-Search-Results.jpg

This phenomenon, also known as #keyword cannibalism, is a by-product of an #seo campaign gone wrong. It occurs when you overdo SEO-ing your articles and blast your social media accounts with backlinks to your site, thus your key terms “cannibalize” your preferred articles and your other entries like those in your Digg, Stumble Upon profiles and other web portals end up ranking higher than those in your primary website. Naturally, the best way to avoid this ill effect is to observe proper SEO techniques and to stop overdoing things. Ever heard of the saying too much of anything is bad? That goes for SEO too.

●    Create variations in your titles

    Always ensure that each post is unique, and that you employ varying long tail key phrases for ranking instead of just a highly coveted single short tail one. If you have to submit your content to social media portals like Digg, create a new title for each copy you submit so that you don't lose a well-crafted entry on your site to highly trafficked ones that have higher PageRank.

●    Spice up key terminologies

    Make use of synonyms when drafting content to ensure optimum benefits per post, and so that spiders     don't get your posts mixed up due to redundant permalink structure. While it's wise to stick to your     particular niche, it is not any wiser to repeat the same keywords time and again in ALL your articles just     so you'd have desired keywords ranking high up the hierarchy. Spice up your blog with an assortment of     keywords, both short-tail and long-tail. Not only will this prevent keyword cannibalism, it will also keep     readers engaged and interested.

●    Don't overdo optimization

It's easy to fall prey to overdoing SEO efforts to achieve more than what you'd normally expect for a post, but try not to do so. Overly optimizing anchor text links is a surefire way for unintended posts to cannibalize your intended article.

●    Place a no-follow attribute on your site

This may seem counter intuitive to SEO, as a no-follow attribute means you don't want your material indexed by crawlers. And why would you post something that you wouldn't want to be indexed? Well, for the reason that you do not want to dilute search pages or for some posts that are stuffed with keywords to over power one that you wish to rank high.

With more and more blogs cropping up out of nowhere each day, we as SEO marketers wish we could all bag first prize in the keyword competition. Remember though that sometimes less means more. Don't go over optimizing content; you might find that sometimes doing so will reap more benefits for you.

How Social Media Signals Play A Part In Your Rankings

Two years back, #seo expert Danny Sullivan explored how #socialmedia signals affected search engine rankings. Back then, he surmised that while Facebook remains irrelevant to Google, retweets has become an invaluable part of building links. Immediately after, Google mogul Matt Cutts confirmed that organic SEO is indeed influenced by social media signals.

Although many SEO professionals are still evaluating the extent of social signal’s effect on rankings, various research studies prove that they are correlated to an increase in site traffic, rankings, and consequently, revenue.

Image From: http://socialmetricspro.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/connection_ssignals_seo.jpg

 

Social signals affect rankings in two ways: direct and indirect. Direct social media ranking signals include:

·         Facebook likes and shares

·         Twitter followers and retweets

·         Tweets where your brand is indicated or which pertain to a linkback to your site

·         Individuals who included you in their Google+ circles

On the other hand, indirect influence is directed by these factors:

·         Inbound links and mentions

This is the most important role of social media. The more linkbacks and social media mentions you procure, the more brand awareness and online visibility you raise. In fact, inbound links , especially from high quality sites, are far more important as a ranking criteria than social media and Matt Cutts has made this pretty clear.

·         Positive feedback in Google, Yelp and other similar sites

Through social networking channels, businesses are able to create a distinct and presentable image for their brand. More importantly, it allows them to establish genuine customer connection and trust and boost customer loyalty. This is turn, increases the likelihood of more positive reviews on sites like Google Local and Yelp.

Positive reviews mean satisfied customers. The number of positive feedback directly affects local and national search rank. The more satisfied clients you have tweeting about you or promoting you on their Facebook accounts, the better chances you have of attaining a higher ranking.

·         Less bounce rate and longer visitor time on website

Decreased bounce rate means visitors are pleased with your web content, thus compelling them to spend more time on-site. Similarly, if more consumers are aware of your brand through social media, then the higher chances you have of acquiring repeat visits, and the longer time-on-site you have. Google is able to accurately gauge if a website did satisfy customer queries and how many repeat visits there are to the same site, which makes this metric an effective tool for increasing organic search ranks.

There’s also that recent implementation of Google AuthorRank, which is aimed at identifying credible authors so that their content do not just receive higher search engine rankings, but also give more value to their outbound links.

 

While the impact of social signals are still under continuous study, their expanding role in algorithms that pertain to ranking can not be denied. Companies who welcome social media signals with open arms and eyes have been proven to enjoy wonderful benefits in terms of lead conversion, customer loyalty and awareness, word-of-mouth advertising and ultimately, profit.