Why Organic Search is better than Paid Search Ads

Have you invested in SEO strategically?

Today the choices in digital marketing for a CEO / Marketing VP are many. You can use Google Adwords or Bing Ads for search ads. You can use paid promotion in  Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and Pinterest.  No longer are you totally dependent on Google rankings. Thank God.

Can you neglect organic search? Should you stop investing in SEO?
There are several reasons why SEO is still the king.

Organic Search Delivers Relevant Traffic

Organic is much better for delivering relevant traffic. paid search ads deliver better conversions, but deliver only 10 percent of overall total traffic. Results show that a using both channels optimizes  delivery of high performing content. Combining organic and paid search increases website traffic, but more crucially, it will yield a bigger return on the investment.

Social Drives only 5% of the Traffic

A large-scale study found organic search drives 51 percent of all visitors to B2B and B2C websites, dominating all other non-organic search channels, including paid search (10%) and social (5%).

Click-Through Rates (CTRs) are better

Search engine users overwhelmingly click on organic results on Google and Bing : 94 percent click on organic results as compared to 6 percent for paid ads (PPC ads). On an average, users clicked on one of the top three results 68 percent of the time.

Loyalty

Social media and paid ads might be traffic generators, but they are not long-term customer creators. The bounce rates are high, and the number of pages visited is very low. Social media is meant to drive article visits, not overall site traffic and customer loyalty.

You keep paying for interruption marketing, i.e., paid ads or promoted content

Paid search traffic only lasts as long as you keep paying for it. Stop spending, and you will see an instant dip in traffic.
In paid ads, the users did not seek you out. You interrupted their attention while they were browsing, and they thought, ‘this looks cool. Let me check it out. I may need this!’ There is no long-term loyalty or repeat visits from most of the visitors you get this way.

With organic search, the user mindset is different. The user is looking for you, or what you sell/provide. When they find you, if you provided an excellent experience, they usually come back.

Do not neglect organic traffic. Invest in SEO for long term benefits. These results will sustain you during those times when you cannot put more money into your paid budgets.