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Many companies get tempted to stop their paid campaigns when their organic rankings are doing well and improving website traffic.

While this might be a good idea for certain household brand names, most of the time, people that use certain queries in search engines get a variety of results in SERPs, including paid search ads.

Those two things can help companies increase the amount of space they take up on a search engine results page.

Paid and Organic Search Efforts

The reason why brands take up as much space as possible in search engine results pages is to get consumers to see their name enough times. This is what primes consumers for purchasing because the more familiar they become with a brand’s name, the more likely they are to make purchases from that brand.

That’s why companies should be utilizing both organic and paid search, as that’s what allows them to take up the most available space in SERPs.

To put it simply, if a company’s organic listings are operating all by themselves, and there aren’t any paid search efforts being made, that company might get 100 website visitors.

Now, that same company can instead have paid search efforts that are running for a number of keywords, without any organic presence in SERPs, which can also get the business 100 website visitors. But if both of those search efforts are working together, the company will get a lot more than 100 website visitors.

Assessing Paid Search Efforts

First of all, companies need to establish a benchmark for paid search efforts, which is done by reviewing any relevant KPIs according to the channel. Those KPIs can include anything from the number of conversions to the number of visitors, or even their website sessions. Ideally, businesses can analyze the KPIs for organic search on a search engine like Google or Yahoo.

This helps companies evaluate their organic search efforts. Then, paid search efforts should be paused for between one and three weeks.

During this time, it’s important to still keep track of all the same metrics, for both paid and organic search efforts. Although the paid efforts are going to be practically none, it’s important to take note of them to ensure the quality of the assessment.

After the test period, the business can return to the normally paid search efforts for as long as the pause lasted. Then, all of the results of the KPIs can be evaluated once again, to help companies identify the different benefits that both of those search efforts provide.

Making Changes

If a company has noticed that there hasn’t been a big decrease in the important metrics and KPIs during the paused phase of the testing and assessment procedure, it might be smart to scale back its paid search efforts. But it’s also important to note that this isn’t the case for most businesses, which is why many need to have both paid and organic search efforts working in conjunction.

Ronn Torossian is the CEO and Founder of 5W Public Relations. Torossian is also the author of leading PR Book ‘For Immediate Release’.

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Ronn Torossian is the Founder & Chairman of 5W Public Relations, one of the largest independently owned PR firms in the United States. Since founding 5WPR in 2003, he has led the company's growth and vision, with the agency earning accolades including being named a Top 50 Global PR Agency by PRovoke Media, a top three NYC PR agency by O'Dwyers, one of Inc. Magazine's Best Workplaces and being awarded multiple American Business Awards, including a Stevie Award for PR Agency of the Year. With over 25 years of experience crafting and executing powerful narratives, Torossian is one of America's most prolific and well-respected public relations executives. Throughout his career he has advised leading and high-growth businesses, organizations, leaders and boards across corporate, technology and consumer industries. Torossian is known as one of the country's foremost experts on crisis communications. He has lectured on crisis PR at Harvard Business School, appears regularly in the media and has authored two editions of his book, "For Immediate Release: Shape Minds, Build Brands, and Deliver Results With Game-Changing Public Relations," which is an industry best-seller. Torossian's strategic, resourceful approach has been recognized with numerous awards including being named the Stevie American Business Awards Entrepreneur of the Year, the American Business Awards PR Executive of the Year, twice over, an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year semi-finalist, a Top Crisis Communications Professional by Business Insider, Metropolitan Magazine's Most Influential New Yorker, and a recipient of Crain's New York Most Notable in Marketing & PR. Outside of 5W, Torossian serves as a business advisor to and investor in multiple early stage businesses across the media, B2B and B2C landscape. Torossian is the proud father of two daughters. He is an active member of the Young Presidents Organization (YPO) and a board member of multiple not for profit organizations.