I have a good friend who never uses pay per click. He says he gets all the traffic he needs from organic search. He might get all the traffic he wants from organic search, but I doubt that he gets all the traffic he needs.
You see, organic search only accounts for about 80% of traffic online. The other 20%, most of it, comes from pay per click ads. If you rely only on organic SEO then you are effectively denying access to your goods and services to 20% of your market. In effect, you are telling that business you don’t want it. That’s bad for you, for them, and for the market.
Some people will not click on pay per click ads no matter what. You really don’t care. If you have a respectable organic search listing then you’ll likely capture their traffic anyway. Pay per click traffic generally falls into two categories:
- Those who clicked the ad because they are ready to buy right now
- And those who clicked the ad because they saw your organic listing and both exposures made them curious enough to see what you had to offer
You can’t argue with that first category. It’s your bread and butter. But what about the second category. Would they have clicked on your organic search listing if you did not have a pay per click ad on the same page? Maybe. Maybe not. I’d like to think that some of them would, but I’m reasonably certain that not all of them would.
The fact that you’d have a pay per click ad on the same page as your organic search listing actually increases your credibility. It tells potential customers that you are serious about getting their business. With so many organic search listings today being lousy returns for what people are actually looking for, the pay per click ad is one more chance to get that customer’s foot in your door. Why would you pass that up?
