I was in the office of a V.P. of an Austin, Texas financial institution yesterday and the subject of Google searches came up. He claimed that he would never click on a PPC result - only organic results.
That reminded me of an article I read in WebPro News several years ago. The magazine had done a poll of Google search engine users to find out what results were most frequently selected by the users. The results of the poll showed that most consumers clicked on the very first Google result, which is almost always a paid advertisement. Further, most users only clicked on listings that were displayed on the top 50% of the page, including the PPC listings in the right column.
When asked if they could tell an organic result from a PPC result, over 90% of the search engine users said they did not know the difference.
The V.P. I was visiting with was responsible for the marketing department of the financial institution and had some knowledge of search engine promotion. Why he refused to click on PPC results is a mystery to me, but it's clear that the general public couldn't care less.
From a website design perspective, I believe it's vital to be listed on the top half of the first page of Google search results for your primary keyword phrase, and if you have to pay to be there, so be it.
No comments:
Post a Comment