Paying For Clicks - Has SEO lost some relevance?

Is being in the top 10 really enough?

[martinibuster]

The more I look at it, the more it appears that being in the top 10 isn't enough.

I optimized my client's web sites to score at least 4 positions of the top 10 of the serps for their major keywords. Yet I remember how well I did for some of those keywords in PPC, 8-20% ctr, perhaps better than my competitors...

And I wonder, if I stop my PPC campaign will my competitors gain customers at my expense?

Does a well scripted PPC ad receive a better CTR than a well optimized natural SERP? I tend to believe so.

Is being in the top 10 as important as it used to be?

I'm starting to believe that being in the top ten isn't as important as it used to be.

What can this mean for the future of SEO?

[jeremy goodrich]

Well, it means SEO isn't there anymore. It's all about SEM, which would include the old fashioned optimization but that would no longer be the emphasis.

It's also relative to the product, in some niches, the CTR even for the 1st spot isn't going to be incredible. People might look for information but they might also want to buy.

Still works well enough, though if the ROI is there, it makes no sense not to own more of the real estate on the page, ya? :)

[tedster]

Jeremy nailed when he turned our attention to ROI.

For most of my clients, SEO out-performs PPC at the level of income generated for the expense involved. I really only have one client where I can't say that, and they completely abandoned SEO for PPC about 2 years ago.

I still think SEO would perform better, even in that case, but they're very old school marketers and don't really get what SEO is all about. Even with all my persuasive abilities brought to the task ;)