Why Use Paid Search (PPC) When You’re Already Ranking Organically?

A common question often asked in online marketing is whether or not to continue using paid search if you’re already achieving top organic search rankings. Why would you pay for traffic when you’re already in position 1 or 2? There are in fact a number of key benefits and sound arguments for keeping your paid search campaigns active despite these great results.

High organic rankings do not always warrant high click throughs

Just because you’re ranking #1 in the natural search results does not guarantee visitor click-throughs. Quite often, a PPC ad itself can be more successful than the organic listing. Why? The calls to action within paid search listings are generally much stronger and more compelling than the title and description found in the natural results. You may well find that turning off your PPC campaign in favour of your highly ranked organic listing results in a vast drop in overall traffic and conversions.

Have a look through your analytics, are your highly ranked pages returning good conversions? Or is the bulk of your traffic coming via your paid search component? Do your organic results contain a clear marketing message? Even if they do, you most probably have more than one offer or more than one target audience to communicate to.

You can’t possibly be ranking #1 for all your keyword phrases

Achieving top rankings for all your keyword variations is extremely difficult in a competitive market. Paid search can give you visibility for those harder to rank key terms. Depending on your business, there are potentially an infinite number of possible ‘long-tail’ keywords and phrases that can only be tapped in to via a fully optimised paid search campaign.

Paid Search enhances your online visibility

Appearing in both organic and paid search listings can help in achieving a stronger brand awareness and visibility online. It can also help to build the overall credibility and trust of your business according to some studies. Dominating the search results has also proven to be an effective online strategy in highly competitive markets.

Paid Search sends additional traffic

Increased search visibility generally leads to more traffic. Studies have shown that multiple exposures within the search results can increase your overall click-through rate (CTR) as customers are more likely to buy when exposed to a company's brand in multiple places.

Further studies have shown that you can double your traffic by being at the top of both paid and organic results.

What’s more, on average, 20% of searchers click on paid search results on any given search. So, if you can obtain additional targeted traffic through a PPC campaign, why wouldn’t you?

You can’t rely on organic rankings

Organic search results are forever fluctuating and are served differently from one searcher to the next. Whether through algorithmic updates, competition, data centres, personalised or universal search, PPC can act as a sort of back-up to the ever changing search landscape.

Paid Search supports SEO

Lastly, but of considerable importance, paid search campaigns are an ideal testing ground for search engine optimisation. The information generated through paid search campaigns is invaluable for an effective SEO strategy. Paid Search campaigns are able to target an endless number of keyword variations and can be tracked extensively to identify which keywords and ad copy send the most traffic and which ones convert.

In the end, having a well optimised and successfully integrated SEO and PPC campaign is a powerful combination. SEO and PPC work hand in hand in delivering superior results and maximising your overall brand exposure and ROI.

Annemarie Hunter - Search Marketing Specialist