Report says organic listings as valuable as paid search marketing

A study by internet marketing firm WebSideStory has found that strong natural listings on search engines are almost as effective as paid search marketing for making sales.

The company tested more than 57 million search engine queries to client sites over the first 8 months of this year, and tracked the conversion rates from organic (natural) search listings as opposed to paid search listings.

WebSideStory’s research found paid search listing converted into sales 3.4% of the time, but natural search listings scored nearly comparably at 3.13%.

The story underlines the need for companies to seriously consider their online presence not simply in paid advertising markets, but also simple search engine visibility issues that can also bring in real sales.

While the industry that focuses on delivering sales from natural search results - Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) - has a somewhat grey reputation, the bottom line is that this is a key specialist industry that can deliver real returns on investment and shouldn’t be easily discounted.