Is Natural Search Better?

Speaking at the Search Engine Marketing Conference, Virgin Money's Ben Whitnell suggested that natural search generated better return on investment than paid search - that seeing a company within the natural search results encourages trust in web users who are becoming more savvy about the those adverts appearing in the paid/sponsored search areas.

Says Mr Whitnell; "I'm convinced that people trust natural search results. They get used to where the sponsored links are and where the natural results are and are more and more understanding of the merit of the most relevant results," he said at the conference, according to mad.co.uk.
"There is a huge floating market open to suggestion," he added.

This follows recent suggestions that Microsoft's new search algorithm may penalise the natural search rankings of those sites that indulge in large volumes of paid search marketing.
Before you all run to switch off your Adwords accounts, it's worth taking some time to weigh up the pros and cons and balance it against your personal experience.

Paid search allows you to do something that natural search doesn't - that is, to specifically word and target your ad content on the fly without any impact on where your ad listing appears (this is purely down to the price you are bidding).

Imagine trying something similar with your on-the-page SEO - to implement such drastic changes in that environment on a regular basis would likely result in significant drops in your site rankings.

Each approach offers different advantages, and the recent surge in paid search advertising shows that this market still has plenty of legs left for some time to come.