I think it’s time to stop chewing over the SEO vs. AdWords debate. Here’s why.
Google have long argued an absolute separation of their organic and paid search results, at least from the point of view of the factors and variables involved. Yet the two sets of results have, over the years, moved closer to each other, both in terms of spacing and appearance.
Google’s position is an interesting one, as the majority of their visitors are probably more interested in the organic results than the ads. Google’s revenue, of course, comes from the clicks on the ads. So while the organic results (and underlying data) act as the bait to draw the masses in to Google’s network, it’s the ads themselves that feed the very infrastructure that supports them.
This balancing point is incredibly fine. If Google get it wrong, they risk either alienating and losing their clicking customers, or losing and alienating their clicking customers. Caught between a rock and a rock in other words.
The question for many businesses is where to invest their resources – in organic search engine optimisation/optimization or in AdWords.
There are many who are convinced that Google’s party line on organic and paid separation is little more than a lie, designed to make you reach for your credit cards, but they’re wrong. Dr Pete Myers put together an excellent Mathographic on correlation vs. causation – the internet would be a better place if more people printed it out and put it on the walls by their computers.
But returning to the main question: organic vs. paid. The bottom line is that while the effects of changes can be measured, I’m yet to see a complete understanding of the precise causes of the overall impact.
Consider the following example:
If a person searches for wireframing software in Google, the first few results show one company – Balsamiq – being represented both in the ads and organic results. It doesn’t take the most astute of marketing minds to appreciate that being shown twice in a relatively small amount of space increases the exposure and subsequent chance of being noticed. It’s impossible to say with any degree of accuracy precisely how much each option is effectively being strengthened. It is, however, almost certain that either the ad, the organic listing or (most likely) both are more likely to be clicked. It’s also extremely likely that the balsamiq listings are more likely to be clicked than their comparitively under-represented competition.
Failure to optimise your website for Google and/or failure to effectively compete in AdWords takes away or even eliminates this competitive advantage.
For me there’s nothing to weigh up between AdWords and SEO. It’s both.
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