If you ask most companies who are doing search engine marketing what ad position works best, the overwhelming response would be number one.  Companies are always competing to be in top positions and most want to be number one.  However, you have to ask to yourself when doing search engine marketing if ad position one will work best for your company. The proper way to find out is to run some tests. How well do your campaigns perform when you’re at position one relative to positions 3 or 4?  The type of business you have can affect how well you do in certain ad positions as well. It affected a real life furniture company.

A furniture company which we’ll call “The Sofa Company” started out bidding for positions 1-2. They were doing okay, but somehow there was a feeling they could do better. When we targeted ad positions 3-4 their click thru rate increased. What’s the reasoning? Most people when shopping for furniture don’t buy the first piece they see, they do comparison shopping and then buy. “The Sofa Company” did well because by the time people got to them at position 3-4 they were more ready to buy and because the “The Sofa Company” had good prices, they were able to make the sale. This doesn’t work for every company. Other companies only do well when they’re in the top 2 ad positions. Ad positioning has to be explored on a case by case basis. The best way to know is to test. You may be surprised to find that for your particular company ad position 3 works best.

If you haven’t been on Google.com in the past couple of days, you have yet to see their new tool, Google Suggest. This addition is aimed to give searchers recommendations of what keywords to search upon. Results are determined based on algorithms that can ascertain query predictions. For example, when I go to Google, attempting to search for “Orlando Hotels,” I only have to type four letters until I see my desired keyword:

So what does all this mean for Search Engine Marketing? Easy… you can now pretty much rule out bidding on and paying for any misspelled keywords. In addition, you can get a very good grasp on how competitive a search keyword will be based on the results provided in green. For example, understanding how popular a given keyword is on the World Wide Web can help in determining its potential competitiveness and, therefore, picking the minimum and maximum Cost per Click (CPC) amount. Lastly, Google Suggest acts almost as a keyword research tool, providing anyone building a campaign with additional keyword recommendations, based on what other terms show up in the Suggest drop-down. 

I was on the phone with a client the other day and they asked me why they should bid on their company name when they already have the number one position in Google, Yahoo, and MSN’s organic search results.  I am sure most people would agree, whether it is your company name or an important keyword relative to your business, having a top position in the natural listings is ideal.  When your website does not rank high enough for those targeted keywords for your business, having a top position in the paid search results is an excellent alternative.  But is it a good idea to ignore the paid search model simply because you already have top position in the organic search results for your targeted keywords or business name?

In reality, having strong positions in the natural listings in addition to strong presence in the paid listings gives your website (and business) the best chance for success in online marketing.  Here are a few reasons why:

1. Not every web surfer acts the same online.  Some people just click on the first things they see while others read the search results page before they act.  Some people click on paid listings, others click only natural results.  In order to give your business the highest chance for success you should make your site available to both types of web surfers.
2. Just because you rank high for your business name
   organically doesn’t mean the web surfer won’t click on the paid ad your competitor is running on your business name.  It’s perfectly legal to bid on competitor’s business names as long as you follow the search engines’ rules on ad copy guidelines.  Why give your competitor a chance to grab that lead because you rely on only one section of the page?

We have found that online performance is greatly enhanced if you rank high in the natural search results for a specific keyword and also rank well in the paid listings.  In my opinion, when someone does a keyword search and they see the same company ranked high in the natural and paid listings, they feel the company is more legitimate.  When it comes to internet users, perception is reality!