Google? Well, that name isn’t much of a surprise as Google has become the leading and most  relied on search engine in the world. The company’s mission is “to organize the world’s information and make it univerally accessible and useful.” And since 1998, they’ve done so with clarity, richness, and credibility.

For users, Google is their source and access to the web of information. First, you have your organic searches. They are essentially listings on search engine results pages that appear because of their relevance to the search terms, and are not sponsored or paid by its owner. Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the visibility of these websites or a web pages in a search engine’s “natural,” or un-paid (“organic” or “algorithmic”), search results (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_optimization).  Secondly, search engines are also a source for paid advertisements to be placed and sponsored.   Paid searches or pay-per-click (PPC) are advertisements that are shown on web sites or search engine results with related content that have agreed to show ads. They are displayed when a keyword query matches an advertiser’s keyword list, or when a content site displays relevant content. So, what exactly  do they have to do with Google?

Today, I came across  Forrester’s U.S. Interactive Marketing Forecast, for the years 2011 to 2016. According to the studies, they projected that on average, marketers are spending approximately 88 percent of their search marketing budget on paid search campaigns and only 12 percent on organic search. Surprisingly, while over 2/3 of their budget is focused on paid campaigns, it is still only accessing just 6 percent of the available click-throughs. Furthermore, the mere 12 percent budget towards organic search is accessing 94 percent of the available click-throughs.

Now, what seems to be the problem here? The majority of the marketing budget is being spent on the type of search that attains and gains access to the least percent of available click-throughs.

What’s being done here is that the two resources of time and money, that are responsible and play a role in leveraging the positions of SEO vs. PPC. For SEO, there is an input of time and money where the amount is undetermined. In order to achieve under the top 5 results listed or be within the first 3 pages of the search, developing that position and keyword relevance in a search engine requires effort. However, the results tend to be long lasting. On the other hand, with PPC, a website or web page can instantaneously gain a top position with payment, but can just as easily disappear as well.

Although paying to be “on top” can help develop awareness and click through rates, organic search results can be just as influential. While less of an average marketer’s budget is allocated towards organic, it’s important to take into consideration the content, PR, social media, etc. for the website. Just because it doesn’t take on the greatest funding, doesn’t necessarily mean that the supporting marketing tactics can potentially add more value than a fixed cost.