Hyper-responsiveness explains income disparity in SERP

By Mark Kimathi

Dan Thies, a faculty member of the influential StomperNet.com has noted the disparity in incomes between Pay Per Click (PPC) channels from that of organic listing for the same keyword.

In a nut-shell, if you rank number one for a keyword in PPC, you will make more money than if you ranked number one for the same keyword in organic listing despite them being on the same Search Engine Ranking Page (SERP).

At first blush, it seems like a bias of expertise. There is a renowned PPC expert with many years under his belt. But he is also one of the faculty founders of StomperNet.com, which is known for its Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) prowess.

Many consider organic listing in SE as "free" because unlike PPC you do not have to pay to be listed. Keeping in mind that they are also the most engaged by searchers, you would expect more business from organic listing.

Not to mention, PPC entails an expense that needs to be considered when calculating income. The answer to this disparity may lay in the concept of the hyper-responsive market.

In the 80/20 rule, you will find that about 20 per cent of your customers are the reason for 80 per cent of your web profits.

income contribution

And if we were to apply the rule into these subsets, we will eventually find that about one per cent to five per cent of your customers contribute about 50 per cent of your income. If we took these heuristics in context of the average conversion rates online, then you find that about one in 2,000 visitors to your website contribute 50 per cent of the income.

This one in two thousand is what Dr Glen Livingstone calls the hyper-responsive market.

It can be supposed that this group tends to engage PPC advert more than they do with organic listing.Though not tested, this supposition has some merit because PPC adverts are designed to appeal to characteristics of hyper-responsive buyers.

Generally speaking, a hyper-responsive searcher in SERP is looking to buy or at least with intense purpose to engage. Nearly always, they are well informed about the matter at hand and can sniff out ineptness 50 paces away.

This is what Dr Livingstone calls the BS detector. And because they are well educated on what they want, they tend to look for the "point of difference" in your offer. For example, a lady searching for "baby gifts from grandma" has intense determination expressed in those keywords.

But when they search in Google, the organic listing is a hodgepodge of grandma gifts, gifts for grandma etc while in PPC listing on the right hand side of the SERP, you have a high chance of seeing that exact title "Baby Gifts from Grandma".