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The Art of SEO
book

The Art of SEO

by Eric Enge, Stephan Spencer, Rand Fishkin, Jessie Stricchiola
October 2009
Beginner content levelBeginner
602 pages
19h 50m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from The Art of SEO

Click Tracking: How Users Click on Results, Natural Versus Paid

By now, you should be convinced that you want to be on the top of the SERPs. It never hurts to be #1 in the natural search results.

In a bit of contrast to that, data shows that you may not want to be #1 in the paid search results, because the resulting cost to gain the #1 position in a PPC campaign can reduce the total net margin on your campaign. A study released by AdGooroo in June 2008 found that:

Bidding for top positions usually makes financial sense only for high-budget, brand-name advertisers. Most other advertisers will find the optimal position for the majority of their keywords to lie between positions 5–7.

Of course, many advertisers may seek the #1 position in paid search results for a number of reasons. For example, if they have a really solid backend on their website and are able to make money when they are in the #1 position, they may well choose to pursue it. Nonetheless, the data from the survey suggests that there are many organizations for which being #1 in paid search does not make sense.

Even if your natural ranking is #1, you can still increase the ranking page’s click rate by having a sponsored ad above it or in the right column. The AdGooroo survey showed that a prominent paid ad on the same search results page makes your #1 natural ranking receive 20% more clicks.

Distribution of Search Results and Traffic

To start breaking this down a bit, Figure 1-10 shows the screen real estate occupied by the ...

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9780596809133Errata Page