Website Usability Paid Versus Organic Search Engine Visitors Analytics
There is a vast difference in a visitor that has arrived at your site from either a paid ad or an organic search. Looking through analytics data from a couple of years and spanning several types of industries and website types, I have found that there is a startling difference in the quality of traffic from these different types of traffic sources. At first glance it seems that there wouldn’t be that much difference, after all a keyword phrase is the same whether the SERP link is paid for or natural, right?
WRONG. There is actually a lot of evidence that suggests paid ad traffic is almost entirely made up of less experienced users. This statement is even more apparent with Google and its AdSence ads. Before Google became a word in the dictionary and the behemoth search monster that it is now, it was mainly the source of information for mostly technical oriented users. That still rings true today. In fact most experienced users know that the top of the searches are paid for, and that anyone with some money can obtain high placement in Yahoo or Google by paying for it. They also know that the listings within the organic SERPS have been placed their because Google (and now Yahoo since it has unleashed its updated Inktomi based search engine), believes the site is an authority on the subject the visitor is interested in.
That would suggest that these ads are often ignored by experienced users. Check out my post on Website Usability Testing for more info on what qualifies a user as experienced. As that post explains more experienced users have much less patience when initially visiting a site, but also spend less time on pages since they are more familiar with navigation and other website functionality. That means that the visitors that arrive through paid search are less experienced and require a simpler website format.
Paid Search Visitor Usability
Through custom landing pages (both Yahoo and Google allow for custom entry pages as long as they are relevant to the search term) it is possible to optimize your paid search pages. As I mentioned above most users that are not experienced online don’t recognize the “sponsored” listings for what they truly are – paid advertising. This being said, it is key to arrange and optimize the landing pages for your paid search visitors. I can’t stress it enough, having custom pages not only allows you to separate your paid visitors for analytics, but gives you the opportunity to not waste time getting across the whole point of your website, just the meat of the subject relating to the keyword or phrase that you are paying for.
Another critical mistake often made in the actual creation of a paid listing is to use either the same title and description used on your general pages. If you know anything about SEO than you have optimized your meta tags to follow the guidelines laid out in my Meta Tags SEO Tips post, in other words you are walking that line of what a person needs to see to click on your listing in the SERPS, and what the search engines need to see to put your page IN the SERPS!
With paid or sponsored listings, you don’t have to worry about what the search engines think about either your listing or the optimized landing page.
*Note: Due to increasing pressure both Google and Yahoo take careful steps to NOT give any organic value to paid listings. I have run several experiments over time with pages that were linked in from Google and Yahoo sponsored listings to see if they received any benefit at all outside of normal spidering. Up to a couple of months ago pages within Yahoo sponsored searches DID get a boost, but never in Google, Ever! Yahoo has tightened this up quite a bit lately.
Back on subject now, the title and description that you use for your listing must clearly and succinctly give the use exactly what they need to click on your ad. The description should be short and sweet, preferably with a hook that will separate yours from the plethora of other ads.
Paid visitors are less experienced and are more likely to not understand a complex website. Be sure to utilize optimized and simple landing pages for your paid campaigns.
