The very natures of Paid Search and Organic Search may seem different, but they are actually substantially similar. Most folks specialize in one or the other, but comparatively few excel in both. This has resulted in a severe lack of cross-pollination between the two fields, other than in the area of keyword research.
Where overlap exists, we can leverage learnings in one field to understand the other, provided we’re mindful of their differences. One of the landmark papers on Paid Search was a Google paper called Predicting Bounce Rates in Sponsored Search Advertisements; here we’ll ruminate on the similarities and differences between the two fields and see how we can apply the key finding of that paper to the field of Organic Search. Read on »