Paid or Organic Search: Which is Better?
What comes first, the chicken or the egg? The debate about which form of search engine marketing should come first in a digital marketing strategy has been a heated discussion for many years.
What is pay per click marketing?
The method known for quickly gaining traffic, PPC marketing is a way to bid for the top search engine spots on specific keywords or phrases. Your position can change quickly with paid search since bidding is done in real time on a click by click basis.
What is Organic Search Marketing?
Organic SEO is a form of search marketing consisting of a more complex approach than paid search . It is based on the quality of the website and the quality of the content it contains. While most users are aware that a paid ad is bought by a company, less know that there is an industry that exists for increasing your position in the organic search results.
The Advantages of Paid Ads
Paid ads will give you immediate insights into what a customer searches for, calls to action they click on, and how they respond to your website page. If you have the capital to invest in paid ads, you can determine in real time what works and what needs work.
The Disadvantages of Paid Ads
Unless you know a lot about pay per click advertising, you will need to pay for an agency to manage your ads. This means that your advertising is now more expensive. As with all forms of paid marketing, Google adwords, Yahoo at tech, and Bing Microsoft ads will increase over time as your industry becomes more competitive.
The Advantages of Organic Search
Investing into driving organic traffic gives you more than just extra clicks. Creating organic content and building a strong technical website improves the overall quality of your website. You are adding value to your customers and organization when you implement a content marketing strategy.
The Disadvantages of Organic Search
Organic ranking takes time. Except for longer tail keywords, ranking organically requires you to be the topic authority. Often this requires multiple pieces of content (also known as a content cluster) for Google to recognize you as the authority for that industry or subject matter.
Paid Search and Organic Search?
Yes, while there is almost as much polarization between paid vs. organic as there is in politics, you can use both paid ads and organic search to your advantage. Even when targeting the same term or phrase, showing up twice (or three times for local SEO) gives you more visibility on a page.
Which Type of Search Marketing Comes First?
In our admittedly biased position, organic search should be the first area of focus for service, local, ecommerce, and content based businesses. Unless you have a large marketing budget and need to scale quickly, paid search should be reserved for when you clearly understand the market you serve and have identified opportunities that organic search rankings can benefit from.
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