PPC vs. Natural - Is the conversion rate different?

PPC is instantaneous comparitively. Is the conversion rate better though?

[AZchica]

Hi Friends. I've been doing PPC and SEO for several clients. I was asked an interesting question.. We all know that going for both Natural and PPC is a smart move.. but is there a difference in the conversion rate of PPC?

If I were to include Shopping Feeds, Yahoo paid inclusion, Adwords, and Overture.. what would you guys say the percentage of conversion is in comparison to Natural Listings?

[redzone]

That's a very broad question, with many tangible/intangible variables.

Conversions from PPC sources can vary dramatically from the same source based on bid pricing.

The most important factor to evaluate is ROAS (Return On Adspend)... Even Organic listings have costs to develop/maintain: SEO, link buys, etc...

Sites of any size, track the return on spend of both organic and PPC campaigns. The larger the budget the more need for detailed analytics.

On the PPC side I've heard many times: "I focus on the 10% of my keywords that generate 80% of my spend"..

But, when ROAS tracking analytics are put in place, we've usually found it's the 90% of the keywords that only generate 20% of the spend that add an additional 10-15% profit to the bottom line.

Shopping engines, make sure you are bidding at the product level at Bizrate/Nextag, and tracking ROAS at the product level across all shopping engines. Easy to watch ad spend skyrocket going into the holiday season.

Organic, we chart the total expense on a monthly basis, and the incremental increase in revenue, and compute a ROS (Return on Spend).. Obviously organic optimization efforts don't bring immediate returns, but over time, the ROS should be well on the positive side.

[cabowabo]

That is a very general question and can't be used for all industries. However, generally speaking, the conversion ratio for paid search should always be higher than organic search because of the higher targeted keywords. However, my testing has shown that the same keyword phrase, both going to the same type of landing page is about the same. But it is rare for us to use the same landing page with PPC as we do with organic. Best thing to do is run a test yourself. I know that sounds like a pain, but you will learn a ton.

Cheers,

CaboWabo