Part 2. Debate: paid vs. natural. When and where should I allocate my budget on search?

By Neil Jackson, Director of Search, Tamar

As the current downturn continues to bite, online marketing directors like ordinary consumers on the High St will become ruthless in their pursuit of value. The question of how best to allocate search budget is one which will come under much closer scrutiny which, slightly counter intuitively, is something which we should be really welcoming as an industry.

When times are good and budgets are plentiful, it can be tempting to go for instant gratification rather than think about long term value. In this respect paid search is like hiring a Bugatti Veron for the day - it’s fast, it's expensive, it'll definitely turn heads and grab the attention of passers by. It’s also very easy to drive. If you decide to splash out on one it's going to eat up a lot of your budget, and cost quite a bit to run. It definitely gets results, though when the money runs out it's going to lounge in your garage gathering dust.

Today with budgets tight, natural search is far more like investing in a Volvo S40 - it’s definitely not as fast, and is unlikely to turn as many heads at first, but it's both cheaper and more cost effective. You'll reach the same destination as the Bugatti but you'll have spent less money along the way. Also, once you've got it working properly you won't have to spend as much money on maintenance; it'll just keep ticking along with a regular MOT and a service or two.

There is unfortunately no golden ratio for how much should be spent on natural vs. paid search, but an approach which relies solely on PPC, however sophisticated, can’t really be described as strategic. Both search disciplines need to play specific roles, with natural search investment broadly used to build a strong foundation of organic search listings on a brands key terms. Adwords can then be used selectively to mop up the long tail and generate volume traffic – though at a cost. Innovations such as the increasing adoption of Universal Search with the display of video, images, and blog and news results are changing consumer’s relationships with search engines. What kind of results attracts the click of a consumer are going to vary in different contexts. This will inevitably lead to a richer and more complex search marketing landscape in the years ahead.

To make sense of this, brands and their agencies will need to look even more closely at how their customers behave online. What is the best way to convert a search into a transaction? This will require an even greater emphasis on measurement and analytics and a willingness to share that information between agencies working on a search campaign. Only when armed with that data and insight can you confidently answer the question of when and where to allocate your search budget.

Tips for achieving the right balance:

1. Start now! Natural search can take time to kick in, the sooner you start the sooner you will achieve success

2. Focus on the key generic terms – these will drive the majority of your natural search traffic

3. Use PPC to validate which long tail terms best convert, and then optimise them for natural search!

4. Widen the scope of your natural offering for Google universal search – think video, blog, image and news

5. Always, always put your users first. For content, usability, natural search, whatever. Users always come first.