Pay Per Click Advertising vs Organic Search Results

Search engines are rapidly becoming an important part of a companies marketing mix and for some time there has been the question of the performance difference between Pay Per Click advertising vs Organic Seach Results.

Pay Per Click advertising is where an advertiser pays an agreed amount for each click delivered to their site. The results are generally keyword specific and are delivered above the organic or natural results of the search engine. Pay Per Click is often referred to as Cost Per Click (CPC) or Paid Inclusion. Pay Per Click models include Google Adwords or Yahoo Search Marketing.

Recently, Lee Odden’s Online Marketing site reported that studies by Enquiro and iProspect reveal that 60% to 70% of users trust organic results, whilst research by Jupiter’s Eric T. Peterson reveals that 85% of search engine referrals to commercial web sites come from organic search.

So while organic or natural search results generate the most amount of traffic, there is still a great deal of companies that continue to spend their entire marketing budgets on Pay Per Click advertising instead of investing quality Search Engine Optimisation. By applying quality search engine methodologies aimed at improving the visibility of a website in the search engine listings will have long term benefit to any business.