Google Ads are a common and popular tactic in every digital marketer’s arsenal. Yes, it’s possible to create organic traffic with the help of SEO tactics, but pay-per-click ads regularly outperform organic results. According to recent research by WordStream, Google Ads are an essential part of an online marketing strategy. Here’s why:
- Sponsored results account for 64.6% of all clicks – Only 35.4% of clicks comes from organic, unpaid results. This means that in searches for keywords with high commercial intent, two-thirds of clicks go to sponsored, paid results. Those users searching with high commercial intent keywords are consumers who are looking to buy.
- Location, location, location! – Sponsored ads on high commercial intent keywords take up 85.2% of the above-the-fold pixels. Organic results, however, take up only 14.8% of the above-the-fold pixels.
- They even benefit advertisers that they already rank for organically – If an advertiser purchases ads for keywords that they already rank for organically, 89% of traffic generated by the search ads is new traffic outside of organic search.
- Nearly half of searchers don’t know the difference between paid and organic results – Google’s placement of sponsored ads is less obvious than Facebook’s, so much so that 45.5% of people couldn’t identify paid ads on a search result page.
Besides placement, what else is Google doing to help digital marketers? AdWords has been revamped to recognize spelling errors and keyword variations. Check out our full report.
