Google VS Adwords - Difference in traffic converting

[plasticangel]

Hi guys, i have an important question:

up until now, i used google to receive "free" traffic into my site and had an average revenue of 0.08$ per click -

my question is, now that i'm using adwords, and i see how the competition is hard, specially when the minimum is 0.05$ per click - will the targeted adwords traffic convert much better than the free regular targeted google traffic that i used to have? anyone can estimate the improvements in percents?

Thanks a lot.

[Robsp]

Research indicates that conversions are supposed to be 2 times better with adwords than with regular SERP's. This has been discussed in this forum but i do not have a link.

There are a number of forum members that measure this so maybe they can elaborate on this.

[eWhisper]

That will depend a lot on your site, what it sells, and what is considered a conversion (newsletter signup, purchase product, etc).

People can find your site for a myriad of KWs in G that aren't necessarily targeted towards conversion, but info gathering, or other purposes (I think many sites see a lot of crazy search strings in their logs, and often a site will come up high in G for something that isn't necesarily related to sales/conversions).

Since you control what KWs you'll appear for in AdWords, your conversion rate should be higher as you can track each KW and conversion rate to determine their effectiveness.

% estimates are very difficult to predict without knowing some strong details about your site (and have to watch the TOS for these types of details), and even then, its easy to be a few points off on a conversion %. However, you should aim your targeted traffic to get at least 1% higher conversion % than free traffic, and in many cases it can be 2-3 times higher than your normal conversion.

[shorebreak]

I think 2-3X higher conversion for AdWords vs. SERPS is about right. Buying intent is markedly higher.

[skibum]

It can be heavily dependent on the keywords you're looking at and if you are looking at all Google referrals vs all AdWords clicks or comparing AdWords clicks for a specific keyword vs Google referrals for that very same keyword.

Assuming there is a consumer base that familiar with the site and searches and finds the site by brand, domain, or specific unique product offered by the site, those types of search queries (collectively refered to as branded keywords) tend to have a much higher conversion rates or revenue per click than generic keywords like "blue widgets".

That's one thing to keep in mind when comparing organic and AdWords traffic. The way the data is sliced will often determine what appears to perform best.

When comparing traffic for the same keyword in organic vs AdWords over the long haul, conversions should theoretically always be higher for AdWords because the ad placement, creative, and conversion path can be more precisely setup and tweaked based on user behavior.