brand marketing blog

Google’s Pay Per Click AdWords are generally seen as the poor cousin to a good organic result listing in the SERP's i.e. Page 1 position. On the face of it that may seem to be the case, but I think there is a bit more to it when you dig beneath the surface.

With organic results garnering around 90% of all clicks and AdWords getting only 10%, you would immediately think that organic rules. However, what we do need to consider is the intent of the search.

From my own experience I would surmise that a high number of the 90% organic searchers are simply looking for information and have no intent to buy. Some may be doing pre-purchase research, but many are most likely just looking for information. So if you deduct the number of ‘informational’ searchers that have no intent to buy from those with a commercial motive, the effective number of ‘buyer’ views on organic listings is substantially lower.

On the other hand, the nature of a Google AdWords advert is usually overtly commercial as we all know and does not disguise the fact that a sales lead or commercial outcome is sought. Searchers that click on an AdWords advert are most likely to also have a purchase intent (unless they have been living under a rock and don’t know how Pay Per Click works!).

So despite only 10% of page visitors clicking on an AdWords advert, I would expect almost all of them to have a purchase intent. Whilst I am a firm believer in the value of SEO and organic page rankings, my opinion of AdWords has improved substantially through this insight. Organic rankings through SEO should always be the backbone to your keyword strategy, but there is a great deal of hidden value in advertising with Google AdWords.

One of the great new tools providing an unprecedented insight into the purchase intent and effectiveness (aka ROI) of your keywords is the new AdWords Beta tool within Google Analytics (of course you need to have AdWords and Analytics set up and active). Once you set up your campaign goals, you can measure your actual conversion rate and ROI for every keyword.

Rather than measuring the value of a keyword by CTR (Click Through Rate), which has no relevance to actual conversion), you can see which keyword is really delivering the bacon. This enables you to adjust your keyword selections using a more relevant ROI metric, which should result in a lower cost per conversion.