Blue Fountain Media’s Director of Marketing, Alhan Keser, was just featured in the Wall Street Journal and Smart Money’s SMSmallBiz.com in a story covering Pay-Per-Click advertisements. In an extended interview, Keser helped explain why paid advertisements resulted in higher conversion rates–the ratio of users who actually make a purchase–when compared to the organic, unpaid search results.

Here’s a quick excerpt:

The reason for the differential: Conversion rates tend to improve as shoppers progress through the buying cycle, says Alhan Keser, an SEM specialist at Blue Fountain Media, a boutique web site development and online marketing firm in New York. Although search engine users typically troll organic results to conduct online research, they start favoring sponsored links when they’re ready to buy, he says. “Most people who click on ads are ready to be sold to; they are at the buying stage,” Keser says.

Keser is a certified SEO and SEM expert, meaning he is well versed in all aspects of marketing through search engines–both improving organic results and paid results. Keser has previosuly been featured on Entrepreneur.com, in the Google section of About.com and is a guest expert for Ultra Light Startups–a forum for technology entrepreneurs.