According to MarketingSherpa's annual Benchmark Guide, the average company marketing on the Web spent 88% of their budget on paid search ads. Conversely, the average company marketing on the Web spent only 12% of their budget on search engine optimization (SEO).

Wow. That's a huge disparity.

It also may be a monumental waste of money.

Why?

Call it the Southpaw Eye Ball Effect

We naturally read left-to-right. And that is exactly how most people read on their Internet searches.

Eyetracking studies have conclusively found that most people surfing the Internet pay little attention to, much less click on, the paid ads appearing in the right column. They tend to focus on the top left corner of the page and move down from there.

So, at least with Google, the average searcher sees the two ads at the top of the page, assuming someone has purchased those spots, and the 10 organic listings that follow.

This doesn't mean that the ads in the right column are useless. Only that a smaller portion of potential prospects are paying attention to them and clicking on them. And if you've just started marketing on the Web, those Pay-Per-Click (PPC) spots may be your best bet for attracting prospects, since your site may not even be listed in the organic searches for as long as 8-12 months.

Paid ads are also helpful when you're not finding yourself in the top ten listings in the first few search pages.

This also doesn't necessarily mean that the paid spots appearing above the organic search results are great investments. The ROI on these spots is dropping all the time as your competitors bid against you for those prime spots, boosting the cost of advertising there. In fact, it's estimated that the cost of those coveted spots are going up by at least 25% a year, probably quite a bit more in some cases.

Still, those two spots above the organic searches do garner more attention than the PPCs in the right hand column.

But while paid ad costs are rising, the cost of a click on the organic listings remains--

Zero. Nada. Nothing. 

A prospect can click on your organic result ten times and it costs you nothing. But let them do the same thing on a PPC result, and it's costing you money every time they click it.  

And searchers tend to pay attention to all ten organic search results. While the top three results get nearly a 100% viewing, there is very little drop-off in viewing for the remaining seven organic results. Which is why having a top ten spot in organic searches is so coveted among marketers.

Yet many of those very same marketers fail to focus their budgets where the most prospects are to be found.

Organic Search Can Increase Site Traffic by 38% or More

According to MarketingSherpa, if you are paid ad number five in the right hand column, just .6% (less than one out of 100!) of viewers who click on paid ads will choose you.

But if you're number five in the organic searches on the same page, 8.6% (nearly nine out of every 100) of viewers who click on organic listings will choose you.

And that difference translates into increased traffic for your site.

Marketers who conduct search engine optimization campaigns were asked how their overall site traffic had changed in the six months since they began their campaign. Marketers using in-house resources said overall site traffic rose 38%.

Even better, marketers who outsourced their search engine optimization efforts to an outside expert saw average site traffic grow 110%.

Just multiple your current site traffic by 110% and see what kind of results you could be getting. What would an increase like that do for your bottom line?

Spend Your Money Where the Prospects Are

What portion of your budget is devoted to SEO? Are you like so many others spending 88% of your money on paid advertising, when SEO has a much better ROI? Maybe it's time you reconfigured your marketing budget and devoted a greater portion to SEO.

However, don't necessarily pull all of your paid ads. Eliminate the least successful ones, but keep those that are getting results and returning a decent ROI. A good marketing mix should include both paid ads and SEO.

Just don't shortchange the SEO portion of your budget. You're probably costing yourself money.