WebSideStory, the web analytics company recently released a study that shows search engine conversion rates beating other Internet marketing methods, e.g. banner ads, affiliate marketing, comparison sites, referral links, etc.

During the last three months of 2005, the search engine conversion rate at B2C ecommerce web sites was 2.30 percent, more than twice the conversion rate of other acquisition sources (0.96 percent), which include banner ads, affiliate marketing links, shopping search engines and other referring links according to the WebSideStory Index, However, search engines, including both paid and organic listings, still trailed direct navigation conversion rates (4.23 percent), including bookmarks, by nearly double, according to the index.

WebSideStory’s conversion rates of 2.30% is suprisingly close to the general accepted 2% conversion rate for traditional direct marketing. When will traditional agencies start adding it to their portfolio? For SEM to gain industry wide acceptance, certain biases need to be removed.

Via Adotas.