Natural or Sponsored Listings - Which should you target?

Most webmasters assume that their aim should be to make their sites top of the natural listings on the basis that they will then get traffic for free.  In practice as soon as you start thinking about a plan of action, you also have to start making choices.

 Which listings? 

You don't even want to be top of every search phrase.  You must first decide which search phrases are going to be bring relevant traffic.  This will be a lot easier if you start by defining a niche target market.  After all, most sites should be capable of getting a top position on their own company name but the broader the phrase the harder it will be to achieve.  If you target 'search engine' you are competing with 240 million sites world-wide.  As a small business I wouldn't put money on those odds.

How competitive are you?

Normally there are 20 positions on a Google search results page - 10 natural and 10 sponsored.   You can occupy 2 slots, one in each section.  If you don't occupy both, you are allowing your competitors more weight.  You can also influence strongly the relative positions on the page.  A recent estimate suggested 60% of clicks were on natural listings and some have claimed that the proportion is as high as 85%.  Personally I believe that the closer the visitor is to a purchasing decision, the more likely they are to click on a sponsored advert because those are the ones linked to immediate potential suppliers.

How quickly do you want to obtain results?

Improving natural rankings requires a process that will normally take months.  The results are always uncertain and rankings achieved are always liable to change as a result of competitive action, search engine algorithms, or your own website development.  Sponsored positions can be obtained inside 15 minutes and are largely under your direct control.

What are your financial objectives?

Cash flow is particularly critical for small businesses.  The safest way to build sales is to use sponsored advertising to generate visitors quickly and check that your site generates immediate profit from them.  When that is assured, you can first increase the advertising budget so long as you maintain immediate profitability, then invest in the longer process of site optimisation, content development, linking strategies and other promotion to improve your natural rankings.

Sponsored search advertising is getting more expensive as more businesses learn how profitable it can be and therefore increase the competition for the best positions.  Natural listings are not free because good results normally require significant resources of time and money.

Personally Web 4 Marketing relies entirely on natural rankings to generate enquiries - but then, I can only serve a limited number of clients at any one time and every month I update the site and add newsletters like this one.  If I wanted to grow the business or launch a new one, sponsored advertising would be the key element.

Talk to you next month,

Stephen Orr