How Important Is Search Engine Optimization And Organic Search?

Writing by Nick Stamoulis Tweet

Search engine optimization is all about getting your pages as close to the top of the Search Engine Results Pages (SERP’s) as possible. But why? If you use a PPC campaign you can get as much targeted traffic as required. I read an article on SEO Speedwagon on Organic SEO that really puts the issue into some perspective.

They quoted possible statistics relating to the percentage of clicks through organic search compared to paid search. Only 14% of Google clicks were through paid search, the remaining 86% being through organic search. With those numbers, using search engine optimization to get to the front pages of the SERP’s not only makes sense, you would be crazy not to try – after all, organic search is free.

While he admits the figures may only be hearsay, even if the numbers came at 50/50, getting traffic that is ‘free’ is always going to be valuable. I say ‘free’ because search engine optimization does not come cheaply. I have yet to see a set of figures that provides and adequate ROI value on search engine optimization.

There has to be a break even point below which paid search becomes more financially effective than search engine optimization. For now, at 86/14 ratio makes the effort more than worthwhile. As an exercise, it would be interesting to see how many sites that use paid search come close to that 86/14 ratio. As an analytical statistic, any site that has receives close to or more than 86% of search traffic that is organic can sit back happily in knowledge their search engine optimization strategies are somewhat effective.