The integration of SEO and keywords advertising was developed with the aim of optimizing and increasing the presence of a company, brand or product in search engines. It is the main subject of a research conducted by Icrossing, a global digital marketing company, title of the research is Icrossing Search Synergy – Natural e paid search symbiosis. The answer the study wants to reveal: “Is the efficacy of an integrated campaign of natural search and paid search higher than the efficacy of these same web marketing activities used in a non-integrated way?”. The research analyzes cause and effect, considering the entire metrics web can provide the results are surely surprising…
Natural e paid search simbiosis: the strength of integration
It is now known that search engines represent an essential tool in online marketing activities and sufficient to consider the figures of this market. More than 150 million search users, that is to say 80% of internet users only in the United States, more than 8,5 billion spent in 2007 in search advertising and a trend of continuous and regular growth. Presence in search engines is more and more fundamentally important for online visibility strategies.
However, the lions’ share is represented by paid search accounting for 56% of the market and by seo which covers 24% (the remaining 20% is represented by Paid inclusion and Contextual ads).
But which is the best strategy to allocate efforts and investments in online marketing, how effective is a SEO campaign compared to a keywords advertising campaign as to a company’s marketing objectives?
It is from these questions that Icrossing research starts in analyzing the efficacy of these two web marketing tools and in evaluating the importance of their synergy. It is from these questions that Icrossingresearch starts in analyzing the efficacy of these two web marketing tools and in evaluating the importance of their synergy.
SEO and keywords advertising are surely two different tools under various aspects. In organic positioning, the actors are mainly the website, contents and hyper-textual links. Positioning then depends on search engines algorithms. Results from this activity can be seen after 2 or 3 months.
On the other hand, pay per click campaigns have an almost immediate impact. Dependant on a strong control of textual creativeness and user’s pathway. From the point of view of investments, these can be flexible and controllable day by day and modifiable according to results. Visibility, too, can be adjusted according to needs in a completely mechanical and fast way. But it is obvious that, on the other hand, this kind of campaign requires a continuous budget, which is directly proportional to the traffic towards the site.
These two tools, then, although different from each other, are surely complementary and so it is evident how their synergy and integration can determine the success of an online marketing campaign.
Various studies, in fact, have already previously indicated the importance of the combined use of the two search advertising activities. Nielsen ReelResearch, for example, had shown that when a brand name appeared contextually both in the natural search and in the sponsored links, it was capable to attract 92% of the overall clicks. Where, instead, the brand appeared only in the natural results, the number of clicks decreased to 60%.
Icrossing research goes further, showing how this synergy is capable in not only influencing traffic increase towards the site, but also all the other metrics of online performance.
In fact, data shows that the presence of a keyword in the first position of a search engines natural results is reinforced by the presence of the same one in the sponsored links and can only lead to an increase of visits to the site of more than 90%, but also, for example, an increase of 44.9% in sales, 43.6% in visited pages, 38.9% in time passed surfing the site.
The following table summarizes the results of an integrated search marketing campaign, indicating the value increase, for each of the metrics for online performance, compared to a campaign with keywords advertising alone:
According to the data, it is evident how the presence of the two tools together can strongly influence all the metrics of a campaign.
Icrossing analysis is then able to show through consistent data how overall results from paid and natural searches can be higher than their simple addition (synergy).
The search pattern Icrossing uses, is based on the analysis of 200 keywords present both among natural results and in sponsored ads and uses natural search as a moderator of the cause/effect relationship between paid search and online campaign performances.
In practice, the pattern starts from the analysis of a relation between keywords advertising campaign and its online performance. At this point, the performances of the keywords present in the paid search campaign are compared to the ones appearing contextually also in the search engine results. Data shows, in this last case, a great increase in campaign performance, above all when the keywords are present in the first three pages of engine natural results and among the first results of sponsored links.
Concluding, it is evident how a holistic approach to online marketing strategies can allow companies not only to benefit from all the traffic carried through search engines, but also to exponentially multiply the results of their strategies both to branding and online sales.
