SERPs - The Battle Between Sponsored and Organic Listings

One speedy glance at Google (or any of the other major search engines for that matter), will show you that the typical search engine results page (SERP), has various clear elements. On Google for example, these will include:

* Pay-per-click (PPC) or 'sponsored' results.
Typically, these are on the far right of the page, going down the page. For some search phrases, there will also be PPC results at the top of the page, above the organic results.

* Products, Local and video
Below these sponsored (PPC) results in the main body of the SERP, are sometimes more specialist results. These will depend a lot on the particular topic or term you searched for. These results may include local business results, news headlines, social networking results (such as Twitter), and videos from YouTube.

* Organic results
Below these results, is where all the organic search results can be found. In all three of the major search engines (Google, Yahoo and Bing), the organic results occupy the most amount of space. Interestingly, the least popular the keywords or search terms, the fewer PPC ads will appear, and you will see more space devoted to the natural search listings.

Highly searched for keywords on the other hand, present a whole host of challenges. SERPs for these are often mixed, with lots of PPC and organic results. Standing out through all the clutter for such terms is very challenging. An easy short-cut though, is through targeting keywords that are not searched for so often, but have a lot lower competition.

It is a good idea to target niche (and often long-tail) keywords. For most of these keywords, there are no PPC ads whatsoever, and so all of the results that are shown on the SERP are organic. Doing search engine optimization on your site and your pages for such keywords therefore, will result in the greatest conversion rates, since the competition is not as great. Many of the leading organizations and brands online will usually optimize their websites for the broadest and most popular search terms possible, with no regard to the conversion rates they are getting out of it. With their almost unlimited budgets, they can often afford that type of shotgun approach to marketing.

That said, the vast majority of internet users do trust natural search results. Industry bodies and analysts have done lots of research that all come to the same conclusion. Over 60% of internet users do click on natural search results more than ads. Heavy users, and more experienced internet users actually have a higher rate of clicking on the organic search results. Pretty much the only industry where this is not the case, is the insurance industry, where nearly all of their traffic comes from PPC marketing campaigns.

Clearly, using only PPC similar search engine marketing campaigns, means you will not be getting the most from your online marketing efforts. Alongside boosting traffic, you can build more reputation for your site and company name through SEO efforts to better your organic search results and placement. Any aspiring site owner, especially one whose customers are the internet savvy generation, would therefore do well to invest a fair bit of effort into SEO for their site.

SEO is really not rocket science. Everyone can do it. You can decide the amount of technical detail you wish to get into when you embark on it, but do it you must.

James Winsoar is a SEO Expert specialising in both on-page and off-page search engine optimisation. He can help your company to get a higher ranking in the search engines. Visit his website at http://www.jw-enterprises.co.uk/ or call the SEO hotline on 0115 9400 899.