Paid Search Is The Critical Source To Drive Traffic In Travel Industry

The organic search result is witnessing less real estate as Google AdWords and other Google products such as Shopping, Google+, location, maps etc.are  pushing down the organic results down the page and down the screen. Brands relying on SEO to drive traffic must be rethinking of a more aggressive strategy than a dormant one.

Taking the travel industry into consideration, for a user searching for ‘hotels in delhi‘, the following result is displayed:

The snapshot above clearly gives the picture of where search results are lying. The first visible space displays ads from Google AdWords property followed by Google’s Hotel Ads. With mobile changing the way users behave in the digital space, the search results are further driven out of sight. Such observations lead to the conclusion that paid search dominates in being the source of a successful lead generation.

The importance of paid search was emphasized by CEO of Priceline.com, Paul Hennessy during Skift Global Forum in Brooklyn. He addressed the hyped issue of free SEO versus paid SEM. Making his side of the argument, he summed up his talk saying:

As far as SEO is concerned, my view on that is it’s more of a desktop thought because as the devices get smaller and smaller and smaller, the number of choices from an SEO perspective on mobile decline dramatically. And so I believe it is a paid world. Google is an advertising engine and they drive paid traffic to advertisers. And I think that’s going to continue for quite some time. We will do our best to play in that environment

In this hyper competitive space, paid search is the primary channel to get traffic. In such a scenario, it’s important to ensure that AdWords ads do not become a money sink. Businesses need to smartly decide on a strategy that makes their paid search advertising result oriented. You might want to have a look at the article ‘6 Things Business Owners Must Do To Reduce AdWords Spend‘ to stay on top of your AdWords campaign

To view the opinions of other executives on SEO vs. PPC, view the full article here.