It can be difficult for businesses to find the right online marketing strategy which will bring a website to the top of search results and generate leads. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and SEM (Search Engine Marketing) are two major strategies to approach in order to drive traffic to a website. Both SEO and SEM work highly effective while proper SEO increases the likelihood of a website to appear on the first page of search results by a specific keyword or phrase, SEM is focused on purchasing advertising space on social media sites and search engines including Google. On the other hand, these strategies have downsides. In the case of SEO, it has a limit to control the sites appearing in search engine results.
A report released by Kantar Media compares SEO vs SEM and how search engine marketers can increase company’s ROI. The report showed that more than half of all search engine result pages (55%) had at least one paid advertisement. Organic listings accounted for 85% of all of the listings displayed. The remaining 15% belonged to paid listings. Over 59% of online users were more likely to click the first link appeared in search results.
The report also provides an insight into the importance of paid position – Top, Right, or Bottom. The most popular position where advertisers appeared was on the right side of a search page (61% of all paid listings); 24% of advertisers appeared on the top, and 15% on the bottom. Although the right side constituted the largest percentage for all paid listings, only 13% of online users actually clicked on the links displayed on the right side. Majority of web users (85%) clicked on the listings that appeared on the top. This shows the importance to be on the right place if a company aims to gain more traffic.
The position on the page including both organic and paid listings is certainly important. Search engine marketers need to analyze their SERP competition in order to build a strong and effective online marketing strategy.
iRISEmedia is an online marketing agency located in Toronto, Ontario servicing the GTA and all of Canada.
Source: http://success.compete.com/seeing-between-the-lines-of-the-search-and-the-click-whitepaper
