Kevin Newcomb over at ClickZ reports this week on a new study from WebSiteStory that features some interesting findings in regards to search marketing and conversion rates. According to the study, both paid search advertisements and organic listings have a median conversion rate of around 3.5%. Those numbers were based on more than 57 million search engine visits to twenty different B2C web sites during the first three quarters of the year.

From the article:

The article goes on to point out that the pros and cons of each type of advertising seem to balance out pretty evenly to deliver the studies results. After all, paid search campaigns can be very closely controlled and tailored, which SHOULD result in higher conversion rates. That seems to be balanced out however, by the level of trust that people put into sites ranking well organically.

That said, it's important to note that the study shows that organic search volumes tend to be about 1.5 times higher than paid search volume. Thus, while the conversion rates are pretty similar, marketers are receiving more clicks for less dollars when they have well optimized organic search campaigns in place. That should provide small business owners with good incentive to improve both their paid search and organic search campaigns for the upcoming holiday season.