A SEO brand search features in half of all top-converting user journeys
Attribution matters. Take search, for example. In e-commerce, SEO is the most powerful converter to a sale outside of direct-to-site navigation. Yet marketers direct the bulk of their search efforts – not to mention search spend – into PPC.
“Search is great, but you probably don’t understand what the real story is,” says Jon Baron, TagMan’s chief revenue officer and co-founder. “You’ve been overvaluing paid search but undervaluing the SEO element. It’s amazing how many marketers just don’t get that. SEO is more involved in conversions than PPC.”
Baron is discussing the results of an e-tail attribution case study conducted in April, 2011.
“Google PPC is good but it isn’t great. We looked at some clients’ data to see the real impact of search across all the channels, particularly SEO – the free stuff versus SEM – the paid stuff. SEO is a closer, particularly in brand search. Even in generic searches it seems to be performing a lot better than PPC.”
Is SEO a Quick Converter?
Is SEO a quick converter?
•As expected SEO brand search is a strong converter. Users search for brand terms when they’re close to making the purchase decision.
SEO generic search is the strongest non-brand campaign element as compared to display, re-targeting and email, with an 8.3% ratio of straight-to-conversion sales. This makes it easier to forecast sales for. It’s also less affected by changes to the media mix. Moreover, it’s a channel that drives direct ROI due to the self contained conversions.
Generic SEO Initiates Customer Journey
What happens when a generic SEO search initiates the customer journey?
From all journeys initiated by an SEO generic search, the majority of searchers convert via direct navigation or a SEO brand search.
SEO: Indicator or Converter?
Is SEO an indicator or a convertor?
- Analyzing the purchase funnel provides clear insight into the role SEO plays in the marketing mix.
- SEO generic search is an initiator. Over 91 percent of clicks are not last events.
- SEO generic search has over 3X the amount of first events as compared to an affiliate campaign.
You probably don’t want to abandon brand PPC entirely, but until you’re absolutely clear on attribution and the role SEO plays in conversions, you don’t want to mis-allocate the marketing budget. Only looking beyond last click reveals these hidden conversion paths, the simple fact is some channels are bound to look better than others with so simple as last-click attribution. While these results are for a single retailer in April 2011, the findings that organic search out-performs PPC has come up so often that we decided to cut our PPC spend and develop a content strategy.
By reading this post, you are kind of proving the point!
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Thought provoking, I think it’s sometimes easier to see the direct effect of PPC compared to SEO and therefore it makes it easier to ‘prove’ that it’s working when in fact it could be a false picture. Thanks, I will be mulling this one over for a while
SEO folks need to start including Content Development Strategy. It’s amazing that people have been saying Content is King but don’t develop a Content Strategy. The closest we got is link building strategy. That is why we need to start hiring Web Strategists rather than SEO http://www.thepapapost.com/do-not-hire-seo-hire-web-strategist/
Thanks for the insights.
I’m sure that the brand searches have a lot to do with Google recently expanding sitelinks to favor brands. When that many people convert, it’s better to allow the business to capitalize. I think this greater ROI just pushes SEO even farther past Social for tangible sales and continual revenue.
I really enjoyed this article. The way you wrapped it up was perfect. Content strategy.
Content and SEO go hand-in-hand.
There’s a stigma attached to SEO that it’s all about spamming, link-building, and keyword density… but we know better. We know it’s about positioning content so that it can be discovered by visitors that will find it relevant, significant, and useful.
SEO provides so many benefits that it’d be hard to list them all within the scope of a single article. The value for brands trying to raise awareness and eliminate ambiguity is one important consideration. When you have similarly-branded entities competing on the web, you’re faced with indirect competitors, companies that do not offer what you do but still take traffic away from your site.
To me, excellent SEO is about jumpstarting the conversion process. Visitors that reach your content are more likely to take action because they’re finding exactly what they need. With paid placements, you don’t always have buyer confidence and the hits are forced, meaning you may not be the right-fit for what the searching parties are seeking out. That can lead to lots of wasted resources, time in particular.
Now, even though I am all for SEO and offer it as part of end-to-end Content Management and Inbound Marketing services, Social Media inclusive, PPC still has it’s place. It’s a good way to protect your brand. I’ve seen entities find great success combining SEO with PPC side-by-side. Savvy web surfers will see the social signals and the commitment of the company in one fell swoop, which builds trust to boot. With the PPC ads alone, they may just think, “Oh, they just paid to show up in this search space.. But that doesn’t make them exactly what I’m looking for.” I know because that’s what I do and that sentiment is resounded by clients and colleagues alike.
You’ve touched upon so much here that I hope you build upon these thoughts. The visual support is great but I feel you can still do more to drive home the value of SEO and help re-educate audiences out there that have lost faith or never even considered SEO as a major factor in their ongoing business efforts.
I’d like to see what you think about my thoughts on SEO, Inbound Marketing, Social Media, and Conversions here:
http://unbounce.com/seo/the-adaptive-seo-approach
I would not even position SEO as “free”. Surely, the basic stuff is perfect for DIYers, which is a fast-growing group thanks to the social web and the plethora of free infoproducts out there. At the very least, folks should start by researching keywords and considering the language used by their potential customers.
If the need is not pervasive and the market is not primed, so to speak, the research portion has to be much more extensive. After all, how do you explain your “thing” when it is truly break-through, the first of it’s kind (not just the new kid on the block)? I feel that anyone sharing content online and deciding NOT to do any sort of SEO work is doing themselves a huge disservice… But that just creates more opportunity for the rest of us!
Extra kudos for making the distinction between SEM and SEO since, sometimes, we make the mistake of using them interchangeably.
I think that something commonly overlooked with SEO, besides the content piece is the technical components. SEO should be considered a foundational activity for any website, whether it is the site taxonomy or the platforms ability to generate clean URLs. Putting this type of logic in your SEO tool box will allow for better indexing, cleaner understanding by the engines of what your pages are relevant to and feed up the food chain to the SEM channels (i.e., PPC quality scores, CSE relevance through clean product/service naming conventions, etc.).
As the now old adage goes, “build it (right) and they will come”