You open the channel report — organic is the clear winner.
60% of sales, top conversion rate, growing revenue.
The SEO team celebrates. Leadership asks, “Should we cut paid? Why pay if organic works?”
I had a case just like that.
SEO looked unbeatable, and performance budgets got slashed.
Then we dug deeper.
Here’s the catch: organic often isn’t the start of the journey.
It’s the end.
A user might see a banner, click a paid ad, sign up for emails —
then type your brand into Google and buy.
That’s when organic steps in and says:
— “It was me. I brought the customer.”
But really?
Organic just closed the deal. Everything before went unseen.
Rely on last-click attribution, and SEO looks like the solo hero.
Budgets get cut in all the wrong places.
Especially branded search — it grabs credit easily.
And if you don’t examine the full journey, you’ll misread what’s working.
What to do:
• Analyze first-touch — where did the user journey begin?
• Look at assisted conversions — who helped, even if they didn’t close?
• Separate branded organic — that distinction matters.
In one case, 60% of “organic” was branded traffic — driven by prior ads.
Without paid, those users wouldn’t even know us.
To understand SEO’s real role:
• Add first-visit source to reports — that often reveals the true drivers
• Separate branded vs. non-branded keywords — awareness ≠ intent
• Include assist metrics — like in Google Ads: who helped before conversion
• Don’t judge by final steps — evaluate the whole funnel
• Always compare data to business outcomes — not just pretty dashboards
SEO is powerful.
But if you ignore the full path, you’ll give it credit it didn’t earn — and cut what’s actually fueling your growth.
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