So what is the difference between paid and organic search? The organic, or natural, results are the links that are determined by the search engine’s algorithm for page ranking. Paid search results are those links paid by advertisers that appear
on top and/or to the left of the organic search, such as you see in the image to the right.
What comes to mind about search, in a business perspective, is search engine marketing (SEM). This is vital for a business to help increase search-related business objectives, such as visits to their website.
There are two strategies correlated with search engine marketing (SEM): search engine advertising (SEA) and search engine optimization (SEO).
1. Search engine advertising (SEA) uses an advertising product by a search engine. For instance, the banner ads you typically see when you are searching for something in particular.
2. Search engine optimization (SEO) is a strategy used to improve your ranking in the organic search on the search engine results page (SERP). However, this strategy has evolved far beyond page ranking due to the shift in search engines incorporating videos, images, social media, etc., into the search engine results page (SERP).
Even though there has been meaningful insight and perspectives on this topic, no one has been to provide substantial evidence and come up with a conclusion about paid/organic search. So let’s compare two cases. The first case being a search engine results page that ranks #1 without Pay-Per-Click (PPC) and the other with PPC. Two measures revolving around both cases are lift and cannibalization. The former refers to the net traffic in regards to the mix with the PPC advertisement. The latter term refers to the portion of traffic redirected to the PPC ad at the expense of the organic link.
Although it may be near impossible to test paid/organic search with variables such as page layout, search volume, and ranking, it is still possible to gather data and be able to analyze, draw conclusions, and learn about paid/organic search.
Still, it is important to understand the basic principles about search.
·Search patterns move in weekly cycles.
·Search is affected by seasonality, media, and other factors.
·Testing in a period of minimum unpredictability is more helpful (avoid holidays and seasonal peaks if possible).
There are multiple experiments that can be used to gather data but the main purpose is to come up with an approximation, or enough data, to determine what to pay for your PPC ad.
Written by Chris C.