PPC Clickers Are Important, Ignore Them At Your Own Peril

Writing by Brick Marketing on Friday, 11 of January , 2008 at 3:20 pm

(Source) For as much as 88.5% of the time people don’t pay attention to PPC adverts, which means that the click through rate is just 11.5% overall. This fact highlights the need for well-designed and well-executed SEO campaigns by companies for them to reach out to a majority of all those browsing the Internet.

I don’t dispute this SEOs experience and knowledge, but this is faulty logic. And I’m not anti-SEO either. You can see the proof of that here. But I do believe in abstinence from skewering the facts.

First, just because 88.5% of the time searchers don’t pay any mind to PPC ads does not mean that the click through rate of all PPC ads is 11.5%. Because many people online make multiple searches throughout the day, comparing time statistics to actual people clicking through to ads is not a fair comparison. How many times have you tried searching for something and had to make three or four queries to find the information you were looking for? Search is not an exact science.

Secondly, 11.5% of nothing to sneeze at. If the later assertion in the same article is true, that there are 2,500 searches per second, then that means 287.5 people click on a PPC ad every second. That’s 17,250 clicks per minute and 1,035,000 clicks every hour. That’s a lot of clicks.

In advertising, it just takes a fraction of a small market to be profitable. I’m not disputing the value of SEO. Yes, SEO is important, but if you focus only on SEO and do not target PPC clickers then you are ignoring a part of your market. Some people click on organic search listings because they appear beside a PPC ad promoting the same URL or website. Take away the ad and your organic SEO loses value.

The most effective advertising is to use is PPC advertising and SEO in conjunction with each other, as complimentary tools working toward one objective. Paid search clickers are important. Don’t ignore them.

Category: Search Marketing

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