Search Volume, Organic Rankings and Adwords

[jaimo693]

Hi, I hope you can help. And if this has been answered before, I apologise. Just spent two hours searching but couldnt find much at all.

So I have this website, and it ranks in the top 10 for around 150 keywords. Its fairly niche market for targeting the UK market, but subject is for a local area, its got a good optimised site, no link issues, works well, good UI etc.

Problem I have is this. It used to get a fair amount of organic traffic a few years ago to generate around 30 leads a day, and back then that was from just one keyword. Today, we may get one a lead a day from organic even though we rank for a lot more keywords and our exposure all round is good.

However, we also pay for adwords to make up for the lost leads, the same keywords we are ranking for organically! So we bid on adwords and get our 30 leads with the same keywords and monthly search volume as we have organically, yet we dont get any leads for those keywords organically. So Adwords produces leads, organic doesn't, but they are the same keywords and rank next to each other. How does that work?

So my question is, why do our organic keywords that rank just under the adwords that we bid for, with the same monthly searches, only give us 1 lead a day (when they used to give us 30) and adwords now give us 30 leads a day?

Thanks

James

[EGOL]

It used to get a fair amount of organic traffic a few years ago to generate around 30 leads a day, and back then that was from just one keyword.

A lot of people are seeing a strong decline of the amount of traffic that they get from the organic SERPs over the past few years.

In that time Google started adding image results and news results in informational SERPs.  In the transactional SERPs they now place up to four paid ads at the top of the SERPs and often have shopping results within, above, or beside the SERPs.  And in local results they now have maps and local listings.

Google is becoming a better webmaster and is trying to make more money from their SERPs.  Shareholders want growth and the folks at Google know that the best way to do that is to make more money from current traffic.  So they go heavier on the ads, in stronger positions and push the organic rankings down the page.

Google isn't the only ones working. Most of our competitors have become experts and writing more effective Adwords ads and more effective at converting visitors into customers.  That is also taking the sales from above the organic rankings.  Over that time, if a webmaster has not upped his game in earning clicks and converting visitors and becoming a much more competitive and aggressive seller then his sales have fallen dramatically.

Plenty of webmasters have worked really hard the past ten years and have not made massive big gains in their sales.  That's because their competitors are spending billions, google is skimming the best traffic, and everyone on the web has become a lot smarter.  So if those hard-working webmasters have held even in their revenue and profits that is the equivalent of being an awesomeasskicker of the past.