If you want to control the occurrences of links and clicks from a search engine then SEM is the way to go. That's what it's there for. You choose the phrases. You choose where the clicks go. If you're selling consumer products, vacation packages, or anything else that a person might purchase directly from a website with a credit card, then SEM is probably the right tool for the job. A good rule of thumb is, the more general your desired key phrase, and the more directly you want to control the link the more you want to use SEM tools like AdWords and banner ads. But if you want organic search engine traffic, you have to let SEM expectations go and instead understand a different kind of opportunity available through SEO strategies. We've written a lot about organic search already (especially in May 2005 Who's Your Homepage? Managing Lateral Website Traffic and April 2004 Search Engine Optimization Strategy). I'll refer you to these articles in order to contrast SEM expectations with appropriate SEO goals. However, I will reiterate one point we've made before.
In a nutshell the main activity in search engine optimization is to give every page a clear, concise, accurate browser title which has been tweaked to anticipate how people search. These kinds of titles usually contain three or four words, sometimes more. These words describe the subject and describe its specific relevance to the searcher.
It is true that longer, less commonly searched phrases generate significantly fewer clicks than commonly searched phrases. But the "stickiness" of common phrases is much less than the "stickiness" of longer search strings. Stickiness is how active a session is after a click, how many pages are looked at, and what actions are taken. The reason longer, less common phrases are stickier than common ones is due to the process people must go through when searching. When I search I start with general phrases and then add and modify my words until I start to get the results I want. So by the time I click, I've made several search attempts. And each attempt has narrowed my search terms. So when I finally click a result, I am far more likely to have zeroed in on my subject and find what I'm looking for. If I find what I'm looking for, I'll explore the resulting site more fully.
Because of this dynamic I am much happier with my clicks from search engines that used search terms like: "website design process," "web design documentation," "advantages of website," "content management process," and "website development pricing" than I would be with clicks from the phrase "web design." I am happier with a handful of these sessions than I would be with twenty times as many sessions on a generic term that bounced right off my home page. These sessions are also more valuable because the intent of the searcher (as their terms reveal) is usually fulfilled by our content. They are happy they found it. The searcher gets the relevant information they want and we get a potential future client. The way organic search engine results work matches questions with answers, needs with solutions. And that's a good thing.
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