Why pay for a visitor that is already headed to your site?
This is exactly what happens when a PPC campaign is not correctly adapted to match SEO efforts.
Organic cannibalization is a real threat to a marketing budget and needs to be taken seriously when analyzing a campaign. Unfortunately, this analysis may not be clear-cut. There are, however, a few telltale signs of cannibalization:
Inverse Relationships
- Occurs when the total number of organic visitors starts to decrease as pay-per-click visits increase.
No Change
- Occurs when money is being spent on PPC but there is little to no increase in total hits.
While there may be dozens of techniques to analyze what keywords are cannibalizing your organic search results, one of the more methodical solutions is to change one variable at a time. In other words, disable only a few PPC keywords at a time. As each keyword surrenders its traffic routing ability, data can be reviewed as to where the cannibals are hiding. Depending on the scenario surrounding the search engine marketing campaign, each keyword may take a week or two to gather accurate data.
Overall, keep in mind that this testing is not an overnight process but is worth the effort as it may eventually save a significant amount of money.
Good Luck!
