• by Ross Fadner , December 4, 2008

Search Engine Optimization “tends to get the short end of the stick,” from search marketing budgets, Precision Technologies’ Todd Friesen exclaimed at the Search Insider Summit in Park City, Utah. How so? Despite the fact that people click on natural listings 80% of the time, 80% of search budgets are spent on cost-per-click ads, while just 11% goes to boosting natural results through SEO. “We think we do better ROI,” Friesen said.

Of course, smart companies will devote their budgets to both. If you rank above the fold in organic search (the top line of where consumers look on a search page), you should also bid for first place on that term on the sponsored listings side, Friesen says, because if you area on both sides, you are more likely to be clicked on, plus you get the added benefit of your brands’ presence on both sides of the page.

However, Friesen emphasized that being above the fold in organic listings is key. One easy way to guarantee placement on Yahoo, for example, is paid inclusion, a service that isn’t offered by Google. You can buy a flat rate CPC for less than 25 cents in most marketing sectors that will guarantee placement in Yahoo’s natural listings. This is less than the cost of many sponsored listings keywords, and your site will show up in a far more visible area.