PPC vs Organic Search conversion rates

It really depents on your niche and your product/services, one difference is probably that the guys who click on search engine ads are looking to buy something not just learn more information on a subject however of course you pay for these clicks so a better question should be what is the roi of each strategy, and for this one in the long run organic traffic wins plus it helps establishing your business as an authority in each field if you rank on the top for most of your target keywords...

I agree with the above, roi is surely what's key here.

Whilst organic may in the long run provide a better return, I wouldn't turn away from ppc, it's important to have many different ways to drive traffic to your site.

I understand that the ROI on organic traffic is better, but that wasnt my question. I am simply trying to figure out if my organic traffic converts well compared to PPC and what other peoples/businesses ratio is.

These numbers kind of surprise me. I've had much better conversions from my organic traffic than PPC. I guess I've always blamed my poor results with PPC on Google's content network program -- which I think more often than not generates clicks because website visitors hit the links accidentally, or simply because they're bored with the content on the page. Either scenario does not make for a good ROI.

Whether you know it or not, Google had a lot of data on how consumers/visitors shop based on their previous history as well as if they order through your site. That information is tracked and analyzed and of course put into their ppc campaigns for their advertisers. There is a bou 90% of data that everyone in this forum is not being told, point blank.

The best use of PPC is to do what you are doing, but include a email-opt-in box and if you can do some A/B testing...

Since you are getting conversions, then re-invest your money into hiring a seo team to analyze your keywords and website to determine what you can do to increase visitors to that url page that you are seeing conversions.

If you are already getting results from PPC, then increase the price by a penny or two or however much you can get away with, without losing the conversions.

Here's the problem I see with your data.

You're not measuring against a control eliminating just one variable-- so essentially, your question isn't being asked correctly.

Your question should be:

What is influencing my Organic conversion rate?

And

What is influencing my PPC conversion rate?

The reason why is because your keywords for your PPC campaign are more than likely not the same keywords as your Organic keywords. Therefore, your traffic is searching for something different, and therefore - are targeted differently. Their thought process is different, their commercial intention is different your Meta Title/Meta Description to attract those click on the search page were different than the PPC ad click, etc.

As you can see, the variables are SOOOOOO diverse and numerous that it is IMPOSSIBLE to answer the question: "What converts better? PPC or Organic?"

It's an inappropriate question to ask.

The better question to ask, investigate, and learn from is essentially: "What is affecting my conversion rate, and how to I improve it?" Then you form a hypothesis, perform an experiment, isolate variables (split testing) and exploit the ones that are working the best.

And voila! You've entered the 'secret dark underground' of Internet Marketing.

Anyone that tells you: "It depends on your niche, it depends on your products, it depends on whatnot" might be ill informed.

It depends on your efforts to INFLUENCE your conversion rate based on your data collection.

Really depends on what kind of traffic you're getting, with just general SEO traffic I'm around the same 1%. But if I target only buying phrases I can touch around 5% for a £50+ product.

Then don't advertise on content network for text PPC ads.

*sigh.


I like how some people don't read thread comments.


It doesn't MATTER the TYPE of traffic you're getting. It's how you're INFLUENCING the type of traffic to your conversion rate.

It's the same logic behind why stores moved the milk to the back of the store.

It wasn't always there - but they noticed that when they did - their CONVERSION rates on the other items skyrocketed. Why? Because the TRAFFIC (same 'type' of traffic by the way) had a greater surface area to cover to have impulse buys. Hence - the higher the conversions and the higher the profits.

It's why you have candy bars at the check out lines too.

Same 'type' of traffic- it's just how you influence them.

That's the key.

I think that technically, that is a mis-statement. For example, shopper search engine traffic tends to convert better than general search engine traffic. (i.e. google shopping vs google) because shoppers have more commercial intent than normal google (which can just be informational). As such active searchers tend to convert better than interruptive marketing (i.e. I was looking for it vs I just happened to see this ad when I was reading about something kinda sorta related).

Yeah but that's different. Online, people have to click, which brings in factors of page load time, time in general, etc. I can go through an entire grocery store in less than 20 minutes, it would take much longer than that to go through the average website with a similar # of products (just try online grocery shopping, sheesh!) Offline, they just have to see it to reach for it. That's not a good analogy for influencing traffic. Impulse buys in brick and mortar are very different.

For PPC, test, test and test, there is no certain limitation for all prodcuts.
For organic traffic, keywords is the key! some have good ctr some poor.
There is no comparison for them.

I guess it's possibly because people usually click on PPC ads with more intention to buy. When they click on PPC ads, they know that these websites are just trying to sell them, versus possibly just free information for organic ranking websites.

Just my two cents.

Such a simple question.

A good question, but what exactly do you want to learn from this simple question?

If you are trying to find the answer to which is better for you, then you already have your answer.

Let me propose to you a question. It might be interesting to ask that question, but is it really useful?

I suggest that it is not useful to ponder such questions in such a general way because any simple answer to that question is completely circumstantial. The answer is always fluid and ever changing based on circumstances of your strategy, tactics, and thoroughness of application.

In other words, any simple answer to that question will be meaningless because the answers will be completely random. Any answer to that question reflects the effectiveness of your own personal marketing efforts and doesn't apply to the performance of one marketing channel over the other.

It may be useful to ask that question for one particular circumstance, but only if the reason you are asking is to learn "why" one is better than the other.

Bottom line: The question you asked is too vague to provide a useful answer. For such an answer to be useful it would need to be an answer that applies directly to a particular circumstance of your marketing efforts.


For example, it would be more useful to ask:

Which converts better PPC, or organic, for [MY KEYWORD] when landing on [MY LANDING PAGE]?

The fact that you are asking a question about a particular campaign, keyword and landing page makes the answer relevant and useful. Even so, it is still of very limited usefulness, as the answer is really more complex than it may appear on the surface. When we dig deeper we discover that the relationship between organic and PPC traffic is interdependent and not isolated as your simple question seems to imply.

It's okay to start with simply questions, but don't be afraid to dig deeper. When you begin to analyse your traffic channels and discover the true role each channel plays in your overall marketing efforts, you will begin to see that asking such a simple question isn't really useful in today's marketing environment.

A significant amount of conversions, for any given website, will come from multiple channels sources, so each channel can play an important role. So a better question might be to ask what role did PPC, or organic traffic, play in initiating, assisting, or completing the conversion process. As soon as you try to look at your channels in isolation, you are no longer looking at the true story your data is telling. Your traffic channels are interdependent, working together in a very dynamic fashion.

Don't take my word on this, test it for yourself. Fortunately, there are tools available to measure the multi-channel traffic sources to gain insight on how your marketing efforts are utilizing multiple channels an what role each channel has served in generating conversions.

Here are a couple videos that explain and help to get you started: