I’m number one in the SERPS. Should I still buy PPC ads?
This is the question I set about answering in my capacity as E-marketing Executive for Alzheimer's Society. We were the first natural result for a number of search terms that we were also buying PPC ads for. I wanted to know what the effect of turning these ads off would be (both in terms of traffic levels and the quality of visitors) so I set up a little experiment.
The method
I paused five of our keywords on Google Adwords that ranked alzheimers.org.uk number one in the natural results for the same search over a period of two weeks and assessed the differences in traffic and visitor quality using Google Analytics' keyword tool.
The results
Considering that we were number one in the natural rankings I was shocked at how much difference it made to traffic levels by turning off the ads that were triggered by the selected keywords.
Across all five keywords the 'best' performance was a 10% drop in traffic and the worst was over a 50% drop in visitors with the rest averaging out at around 20%. Clearly then, turning off the PPC ads for high performing keywords definitely has a major impact on the levels of traffic you will receive.
Although the quality of the traffic marginally improved as observed in increases in the average time on site, pages per visit and decreases in bounce rate; these gains in no way were as significant as the drop in traffic.
The conclusion
Despite what hardened internet geeks like myself might think about sponsored results (I barely see them as I scan to the natural results) it's obvious from my experiment that people do click on them and that they do contribute a lot of traffic to a site.
So, for my part, I'll be turning my ads back on to capture those internet users that don't discriminate between paid and natural search results and, let's face it, who probably don't know or care what the difference is either.
The method
I paused five of our keywords on Google Adwords that ranked alzheimers.org.uk number one in the natural results for the same search over a period of two weeks and assessed the differences in traffic and visitor quality using Google Analytics' keyword tool.
The results
Considering that we were number one in the natural rankings I was shocked at how much difference it made to traffic levels by turning off the ads that were triggered by the selected keywords.
Across all five keywords the 'best' performance was a 10% drop in traffic and the worst was over a 50% drop in visitors with the rest averaging out at around 20%. Clearly then, turning off the PPC ads for high performing keywords definitely has a major impact on the levels of traffic you will receive.
Although the quality of the traffic marginally improved as observed in increases in the average time on site, pages per visit and decreases in bounce rate; these gains in no way were as significant as the drops in traffic.
The conclusion
Despite what hardened internet geeks like myself might think about sponsored results (I barely see them as I scan to the natural results) it's obvious from my experiment that people do click on them and that they do contribute a lot of traffic to a site.
So, for my part, I'll be turning my ads back on to capture those internet users that don't care to discriminate between paid and natural search results.
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About
Tom Hubbard-Green is the E-marketing Executive at Alzheimer's Society and a freelance technology journalist.
His articles have been published in a variety of magazines and industry publications including Figaro Digital, O2 Venue magazine and City magazine.
