Even an SEO company would be surprised by the recent shift in Google’s policies. Whether you’re an SEO expert, business owner, or marketer, you should know about the shift away from organic into paid results that Google is doing. And you want to use the right techniques and strategies to adjust. Otherwise, you could miss out. So take the following information and put it to use:
The Shift
Even SEO consultants were surprised to see that now the tides have shifted. Before, most of the traffic on desktop and mobile was coming from organic search results. Usually, when a user typed in a key word, they went to the organic result about three fourths of the time.
One can imagine that they trusted the organic result more. However, not Google has changed the way that the paid ads appear. Way back in 2010, which might as well be 50 years for how fast the Internet ages, Google had very small paid product listings and paid ads on the front of the SERP. Now, things are different.
The ads are much bigger. They don’t just equal half of the space, they take up almost all the space on the front page. If you’re trying to rank with SEO still, you’re going to be getting less clicks than you did before. However, there is more.
Multi Tier
Just because organic is shrinking in favor of paid doesn’t mean you have to throw out your strategy. The real approach will be combining the two worlds. With paid search, you can outrank your organic search and still get the same number of overall conversions. The major difference you might notice is that your costs go up per conversion. This is only natural as Google moves to more of a pay-to-play scenario. You’ll want to attack on multiple fronts: paid and organic to reach your desired position.
Mobile
Those sites and product listings that are optimizing for mobile are clearly winning right now. The mobile searches are more likely to end up on a site that the user found with a paid listing. If you type something on mobile now, you’ll often have to scroll and click through multiple pages just to find something that isn’t an ad.
Going Forward
The trend is clearly ppc marketing and mobile. However, that doesn’t mean you should put the burden on yourself to know everything and anything about the moves. You can always hire a professional to help you out. Consider this move if your circumstances dictate it.
Long gone are the days when you could simply throw up a website and drive completely organic traffic to it, just to see it jump up in the rankings overnight. Now, you need more strategies under your belt. By using a blend of techniques, you’ll be able to catch up with the ever-changing shifts that Google does. That way, you can beat out the competition and win in your industry for the keywords that are most important to you.
