When a PPC campaign is instituted what happens to non-branded organic search traffic ?

[Archers]

when a PPC campaign is instituted what happens to non-branded organic search traffic ?

[ThompsonPaul]

The answer, unfortunately, is it depends, Archers.

If your PPC campaign isn't targeting any of your higher ranking organic non-branded terms, you won't likely see any effect on them at all.

If you have a number of high-ranking organic non-branded organic terms that you also target in your PPC, you'll usually see at least a slight drop in traffic from those organic terms as the PPC essentially "cannibalises" some of them. (Though in many cases, having a strong organic result can boost PPC clicks and vice versa - the "maximising shelf space" aspect of having 2 high-ranking listings on a SERP.)

If your PPC is targeting some of your lower-ranking organic terms, you will often see a traffic drop from those lower organic terms as the PPC ad will often "claim the click" from the first page before a visitor gets to the lower pages to see your organic listing. But this is often the primary purpose of PPC - to "buy" a higher ranked listing than you could achieve organically, so the tradeoff in organic traffic is relatively small and expected.

Hope that makes sense?

Paul