We all know that Google is the master of the internet and almost all of us use the most popular search engine everyday either at work or for personal reasons to find a product or service we are looking for or simply to gather information. Also, as far as business is concerned, most enterprises in our time could not survive without Google. That’s because customers find their products or services looking via Google search. As we’re often told when we ask a question or do not know something, “Google it”. But Google displays many results every time we write a keyword and press enter. In fact, some of them are ads. So what’s the best position on Google?

Google is divided into 2 major categories: Paid Search and Organic Search. Below we will analyse what each category means, what the main differences are and what is best for a business.

Paid Search

Paid search is exactly what its name suggests. When we search for something on Google, the first results that will appear on top of the page have a distinctive “Ad” badge. This means that they are paid ads. That is, some business is using Google ads, the well-known “Adwords” or PPC (pay per click). The business has built an Adwords campaign that has included the keyword we just typed to see the specific results, and whenever a user clicks on this ad the business is charged for a click from Google. The business is charged only when someone clicks on the ad and not just because they saw it. That’s why it’s called PPC (pay per click). Google campaigns are based on a bidding system, which means that the cost of each click is determined by many factors such as competition, the market, but also the Google score that gets a campaign that shows if it’s set up correctly, if it is a promising landing page with the right keywords, etc. That’s why it’s important not to build a campaign on our own but trust Google Experts to be sure our campaign will overtake our competitors.

Organic Search

Organic search are the results we see on Google that do not have the “Ad” label. These are all those results that are not ads but organic results. They are businesses that have invested in Digital Marketing for a long period of time and have chosen a remarkable marketing company to slowly become organic in Google’s top rankings. In short, these businesses are market leaders and deserve to be at the top without paying Google for ads.

Paid Search VS Organic Search

After many years of experience and working with small and large businesses all over the world, at Lithos Digital, we believe that these two main Google categories have 3 key differences that show us which category is more important and for what reason.

• Only 40% of internet users are clicking on paid Google ads. The rest of the 60% not only do not click them, but avoid them and go straight for the organic results.
• But their biggest difference is that 40% of the users who click on the paid ads have a very high percentage of abandonment of the site they visited (bounce rate), which is around 80-90%. Bounce rate is when a user leaves the site within the first 10 seconds. This means that they simply did not find what they were looking for, or they were surprised to see what the page is. While 60% of the organic results have a low dropout rate, around 30-40% is the best that a website can have. This clearly tells us how important organic marketing is.
• When paying for Google ads, as you pay you are in the top positions but if you stop paying, you are nowhere. While if you appear in organic results you are slowly and steadily ascending with marketing actions taken by marketing experts and if you catch the top it is difficult to fall. This also means that Google ads can bring immediate results until you climb organically.

Conclusions

I think now we are able to understand what the two categories mean, their differences and their benefits. Undoubtedly organic search is and will be the most important for any business. But that does not mean that paid search does not work. Certainly it does not work for everyone because each business is unique, with its own peculiarities and each sector is different. There are companies that are in the top position for both paid and organic search and enjoy 100% of their capabilities, but there are also companies that paying does not work at all for them and are limited to organic results.

In whatever class your business belongs to, it’s best to do a good market research, evaluate competition, and choose the right strategy based on your business goals and needs. For any advice or help, please do not hesitate to contact us. You can send us an email at info@lithosdigital.gr.