Because searchers don't differentiate between the two, this Avenue A | Razorfish search business development manager says you shouldn't either.

To paraphrase the great "Entourage" character Bob Ryan, what if I told you that many great marketers are not taking full advantage of what is probably their most efficient tactic? Is that something that would interest you?

Quick Insta-Poll-- Agree or Disagree:

• Search is important.
• Search is a way to reach a consumer deeper in the sales funnel.
• Search is an efficient way to find targeted traffic.
• Search enables a consumer to get an answer to their specific question-- regardless of what your marketing message is.
• If you don't provide an answer to that question, your competitor will.

Being a master of the obvious, you've no doubt answered yes to all of these questions. Yet why do many of us treat paid and organic search as separate tactics? 

At its core I get it-- paid search feels like marketing. You control the copy, the wordlist, and the landing pages. Therefore, you control the consumer experience the same way you would in traditional offline marketing. When managing paid search, you also can apply marketing principles by turning on and off words, scaling for seasonality or stopping it altogether.

Organic search feels like an IT "issue"-- which is a friendly corporate euphemism for problem. Organic search is a series of educated guesses and tweaks to your site whose effects can be felt anywhere from 30 days to six months after implemented. Organic search requires more than just choosing the right keywords. It requires addressing the architecture, technology and linking of your site-- something that, as a marketer, you may not completely understand. 

As I speak with clients about keywords and page titles the marketing lights go off. Once I discuss that the larger issues revolve around session IDs, multi-variable URLs and link popularity it resonates, but does not seem as if it is something they should make a decision on. Once an organic search program is in place, you can't control it in the same way as paid search.

With this as the backdrop, let's try another set of questions. This time raise your hands and then put them down when you answer no to a question.  

• Do you engage in paid and organic search?
• Do you track paid and organic search through the same analytics down to the keyword level?
• Do you measure the success of paid and organic search through the same set of KPIs?
• Do you tweak organic when you see changes in rankings the same way you do with paid search?
• Do you use the same agency to manage both?
• If you manage search in house do you own both paid and organic?
• If you use separate agencies, do they share the data or participate on a weekly call?

If you have your hand still raised, stop reading this article-- you get it. If not, please read on.

The latest Pew Internet and comScore studies I've seen say that 70 percent to 80 percent of U.S. searchers click on the organic results over paid results. In addition, 62 percent don't even know the difference between the two. Which brings me to my point -- yes there is one eventually -- if people use search in order to answer a question, and 62 percent of them don't know the difference, then it is imperative to manage this as one tactic. 

Hence, search is search.

Analytics and managing the budget holistically
Remember the old GI Joe cartoons before they were edited on YouTube? At the end they would teach a life lesson and tell you that "knowing is half the battle." That's analytics-- half the battle.

The other half of the battle is making sure that you can measure both paid and organic to the keyword level. This enables you to de-duplicate conversions and better understand where your conversions come from. If you have a limited budget and find that you are converting organically for high cost words, wouldn't you drop a position or two and spend that savings on other more competitive words? Without having analytics or managing this as one tactic, you can't make this decision. With this data you can also shift money around to fund SEO initiatives.

Put your agencies in the same sandbox
While I am an advocate of having one agency manage both tactics -- because, again, search is search -- there are lots of good reasons why clients have separate agencies. If that's the case, get your agencies together in one meeting and lay out your search goals to them. Require that they work together to develop a report that details both tactics, but eventually pulls search success together.

One of our clients required that we work with their media agencies to develop a tool that would help marketers determine optimal spending mix from display and search. Good for them. In doing this, it takes egos and compensations out of the mix, and simply has us focus on their goals and how to reach them. This is how you should approach search as well.

Require a weekly or bi-monthly meeting to discuss the search success and what changes are coming. You may have a design agency making some minor changes to the site that may affect both tactics. In addition, both sides will learn about what is working, which would facilitate conversations around adding content or creating new ad groups.

Marketing ownership
Don't be afraid to channel your inner geek and own SEO the way you own your other marketing tactics. During many engagements, our main point of contact is an IT contact assigned by the marketing contact. By managing this as one tactic, they would manage the implementation of the changes. You manage your paid search agency and should do the same with the SEO work. In many cases, the IT contact usually does not report to the marketing contact, which complicates matters. Work internally to try and have this person aligned, or dotted lined, for this project, so you can ensure success and learn more about the technical aspects of SEO.

When I speak with clients we are all so immersed in the online world that we miss something such as the idea that people don't know the difference between paid and organic. We need to simply take a step back and think about the simplicity that search gives us-- people looking to answer a need and then manage from there.

The other day The Wife (who's a recruiter) was searching for information on a company's product. I watched as she searched and the conversation went something like this:

Wife: "Why can't I find this?"
Me: "Where are you looking?"
Wife: "At these highlighted listings?"
Me: "Check the other ones."
Wife: "What other one?"
Me: "The ones that aren't highlighted-- the ones in the middle."
Wife: “Okay… there it is."

(Wife clicks organic listing which leads to a page on the site, but not a relevant page. Wife hits back button, sees a paid listing and clicks on that-- CPC of $ 1.25.)

Wife: "Wait, why is there a difference, and why didn't that other one go to the right page?"

(20 to 30 minutes of me explaining what I do for a living.)

Wife: "I still don't get it-- first off, they pay you for that? Why would you have a link here (organic) and not here (paid). I mean I'm searching for the answer-- why wouldn't those two links go to the same page?"

(Another 20 to 30 minutes of me explaining what I do for a living.)

Wife: "But I don't care where I find it. It should just be there. I mean search is search right?"

My point, exactly.

Joshua Palau is search business development manager, Avenue A | Razorfish. Read full bio.