Google recently released a report that found businesses that rank well on search engines are more likely to replace PPC campaigns with organic search marketing successfully. While this may seem intuitive, Google’s research demonstrates the ultimate value of reaching the top of SERPs and remaining there.
According to Google statistician David Chain and Google research evangelist Lizzy Van Alstine, businesses that achieve the No. 1 search ranking for a term can replace 50 percent of their website traffic gained from paid search with organic clicks if they pull the plug on paid search campaigns. Overall, Google found that the lower a website ranks in organic search, the less paid search traffic they can expect to replace with organic clicks if they stop investing in PPC. Again, this seems like a natural conclusion.
Google’s data reflects results in the event that paid search campaigns are halted entirely. Since most companies using both paid and unpaid search marketing would be more likely to scale back the former, rather than eliminate it entirely, they can see increased benefits when using both.
Brafton recently reported that SEO and PPC campaigns work best when used together, showing that a company was able to boost paid search traffic after improving its SEO content strategy. Businesses using both channels should consider the implementation of content marketing, as content quality impacts placement in paid and organic results. Plus, users are more likely to stay on a website and eventually convert when they land on pages with relevant content.
