SEO vs PPC Faceoff: Which Side Are You On?

Well, I was not really asking for you opinion. I just wanted to give you mine.

To cut to the chase:

Organic Search Traffic is KING!

Now let me show you why.

Side note: I am not completely discounting paid traffic; I think it still has an important place for things like keyword research, etc.

There are 2 main reasons I believe that organic search engine ranking traffic is the winner here:

• -Organic Traffic is Growing… Paid is Declining
• -Organic Traffic is FREE

Reason #1. Organic Traffic is Growing… Paid is Declining

Let me illustrate with this image:

You see how the clicks are distributed on a search engine results page?

If you are a #1 paid advertiser, you are lucky to get 3% of the traffic! For the sake of the argument and to keep it fair, let’s double the number.

So out of every 100 visitors to a particular result page, you might get 6 to click on your ad. And what if you are not in #1 advertising spot? Your chances go down dramatically.

Where is all the traffic going?

The first organic spot gets anywhere between 41% and 45%. The second one gets about 11%-18%.

That’s 10-20 higher than the top paid listing.

Here’s another way to look at it (just to drill it down): if you are the top advertiser and you get 100 clicks, your organic search competitor will get…

…1000-2000 clicks!
AND it does not cost them a dime.

So what about lower organic search engine rankings? PPC networks at the very least beat them, right?

You guessed it, not quite.

Here’s a screen shot of the numbers:

I am sure these numbers vary depending on who you ask, but the consensus is the same: ANY first page organic SEO traffic spot beats any PPC spot - by quite a margin, I would say.

On top of it, the paid clicks are still on the decline and nobody expects them to rebound.

Once again, organic results are FREE; PPC… well, not exactly.

Let’s quickly take a look at another form of paid advertising:

Banner Ads

There used to be time when banner ads ruled.

As internet users got used to them though, the clicks plummeted and so did the revenue.

This tendency was so prominent that it even received its own name: “banner blindness”.

Take a look at this:

You see that the green boxes with banner ads in them receive ZERO attention? Save your money!

Oh, yeah, I almost forgot:

Reason #2. Organic Traffic is FREE

I believe we covered this point quite thoroughly, don’t you think?

Marketing Takeaway:

So, what you are your thoughts on that? The market is definitely shifting and you need to do something about it, I hope you agree.

If you are new to internet marketing: take my advice, keep your money and forget about PPC. Competition is fiercer than ever, ad costs are high, Google’s “Quality Score” is irrational and the volume of traffic available is shrinking every year.

If you are an intermediate or even an expert marketer, you would have to agree that you need to go where the traffic goes, and that’s away from paid advertising and back to organic searches.

Take ownership of your traffic and claim all the clicks that your PPC competitors are leaving on the table…

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