Anne Holland of MarketingSherpa summarizes several recent eye-tracking studies over at Chief Marketer, in terms of what they say about Search engine optimization. She draws a few conclusions which should come as no surprise:

* Users have short attention spans.
* The copy in your listings really matters.
* Paid search isn’t a replacement for good organic results.

The last of course is where most people need to focus. Paid search is great, can produce good to great ROI, and generate a lot of business. Nothing wrong with that. But it’s consistently reported that 8 of 10 clicks on search engines happen on the organic results side - yet budgets and focus generally isn’t there.

It’s easy to see why. Paid search is relatively straightforward and produces near-instant results. Organic optimization is black magic at best, and takes months to even begin to produce results in many cases. But as these new research results demonstrate, if paid search is most or all of your search engine marketing program, you’re effectively invisible to most searchers.

(Marketing Sherpa also sells a report with more detailed results. We provide this link for your convenience, and don’t get any compensation if you choose to buy it.)