Paid Searchers, rejoice, the analysis we’ve being waiting for is finally here!

Google conducted a study to find out whether paid search ads cannibalize traffic from organic listings appearing on the same PPC keywords. Google’s findings point out that paid search ads DO NOT cannibalize organic traffic, but that they actually provide an 89% incremental lift in site visitors! You can read the full report here: Incremental Clicks Impact of Search Advertising.

I know what you are thinking right now: why should we trust a PPC vs. SEO study from Google? We should for the following reasons:

1. Google actually provides good detail on their methodology and statistical methods.
2. It supports earlier findings from Brad Geddes (Should You Bid On A Keyword If You Rank Organically For That Term?) and NYU undergrad Priti Kumar (Search Advertising in Electronic Markets: A Study on the Impact of Keyword Wordographics) on the same topic.

If you send this to your client and they are still not convinced, you can run a test using what the article calls the “Nuclear Option”:

“The quickest and most effective test is simply to turn off your brand campaigns for a short period and then evaluate the impact on your traffic and your conversions.”

You can read the complete article here: Search Engine Land: Google Study: PPC Ads Do NOT Cannibalize Your Organic Traffic.

Last week, Google released their SEO Report Card, designed to identify opportunities for SEO improvement within Google and to share SEO best practices with the industry.  The report card measures the main pages of 100 Google sites against common optimization categories, assigning a grade for each.

We agree that scoring pages can be a good way to aggregate feedback and flag issues. We asked Razorfish’s SEO team to give Google’s report card a grade, based on its potential usefulness to companies with many websites. Our SEO team was unimpressed — zero As or Bs were handed out. Here’s a sample response, and a chart of all responders’ grades below:

“Google has outlined a basic approach but does not clearly define where emphasis should be placed to maximize value. There are dozens of tactics not addressed in this document that may be affecting their level of organic success.

Though they are self deprecating in their approach to pulling back the curtain, I think they might mislead some people about what is important in SEO. They discuss not having proper keywords in place, but they don’t do a good job specifying how to source keywords or the value of ranking for certain keywords. I mean, regardless of its title tags, the Google Keyword Tool ranks #1 for the top search terms for keyword research. On the one hand, yes, they’re not using some best practices, but on the other, SEO can’t be reduced to a checklist and not all sites are created equal. Some require one or two changes to show improvement while others need the full gamut of techniques.”

We want to hear from you so share your grade with us.

Have an idea for QuickPoll? Email us at razorfishsearch@razorfish.com