Many companies merge SEO and Paid Acquisition under one department to work together instead of in silos. As an SEO specialist, if you’re now reporting to a Head of Growth with experience in Paid or Product, you may need new ways to track and showcase your impact. What are the best tools or methods to measure SEO performance in a way that’s comparable to Paid channels?
Can’t you just separate the paid and organic clicks in your reports?
Compare paid vs organic clicks on the same keywords. Add competition metrics to decide where to focus your PPC budget.
There are a few ways to approach this:
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In Google Ads, check the conversion tracking with a 90-day lookback window. You’ll likely see assisted conversions between organic and paid because users interact with both.
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Branded keywords often show a strong overlap. Run ads on branded terms to protect them, especially comparison keywords. Organic rankings alone won’t cover this.
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Users often click the first result they see. The top result gets 25–50% of clicks, while the second and third share the remaining traffic. If you’re not ranking first organically, you’re losing potential traffic.
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For users with ad blockers, only organic results are visible. If you want to capture those users, you need strong organic rankings.
To save on ad spend and still capture traffic, focus on being first in organic results.
SEO is like running a marathon, while ads are a sprint. SEO takes months to show results, while ads deliver in days. Trying to compare them directly isn’t productive.