Pay-Per-Click vs. Organic SEO

11/02/2006

There are two primary methods of gaining targeted search traffic: Pay-Per-Click advertising (also known as PPC), and organic search. Here I will explain what these are and why it’s important that you understand the difference when hiring a search engine marketing company.

What is Organic Search?

Google started off in 1998 as a simple search engine like many others at the time. A user types what they are looking for into the Google search box and Google then searches through its gigantic index of known web pages and tries to return the most relevant web pages to whatever the user typed in. Because Google did such a good job of finding good relevant pages, it wasn’t long before they became THE trusted source for internet search. These search results are now called the organic search results. No company can buy the top listing, it's purely the determination of Google which sites appear first for any given search term. This is, in fact, the core of Google’s business. If they ever stop providing good relevant search results, internet searchers will go somewhere else to search.

Fig. 1 – Organic Search Results Location

What is PPC?

PPC stands for Pay-Per-Click advertising. In the Fall of 2000, Google started AdWords, their do-it-yourself pay-per-click advertising system. In this system, anyone can bid to have their ad shown next to the organic search results for specific keywords. Currently Google shows these sponsored ads on the side and (usually) the top of the organic results:

Fig. 2 – Pay-Per-Click Ad Location

Generally speaking, the more you bid for a keyword, the higher your ad will appear on the page. What makes this model so popular over other advertising methods is the fact that you “pay per click”. In other words, you only pay if someone actually clicks on your ad and visits your website.

Why You Should Care

It’s completely understandable if you just want to hire someone to handle driving traffic to your website. Most successful businesspeople are too busy with their core business to concern themselves with website marketing methods. But much the same way you wouldn’t buy a car without at least checking the make and model, the miles, etc., you need to know the basic difference between PPC and organic search optimization (SEO). If you don’t, most web marketing companies are going to decide for you and they’ll probably choose the method that’s most profitable for them, not you.

How to Decide Between Organic Search and PPC

By looking at the advantages and disadvantages of each method and then weighing your current financial situation and long-term goals, you should be able to make an informed decision as to which advertising method is right for you.

Advantages of Pay-Per-Click Advertising

+ Nearly Instant Traffic – After you setup a PPC campaign, your ads will often start showing within about ten minutes.

+ Laser Targeting – It’s easy to monitor which keywords bring visitors that actually convert and which don’t. Then you can focus your ad spend on the highest converting keywords.

+ Powerful Money-Making Tool – If you could spend a dollar to make two dollars, how many dollars would you spend? That’s exactly how a well optimized PPC campaign works.

Disadvantages of Pay-Per-Click Advertising

- Every Visitor Costs Money – Some visitors may remember your site and come back again, but overall when you stop paying, the visitors stop coming.

- A High Converting Website is Critical – A good PPC campaign can drive lots of targeted traffic to your site, but if your site doesn’t convince those visitors to convert, it’s all wasted money. A good web marketing company will help to optimize your site to convert.

- Competition is Growing – The amount of competition for those top 10 ad spots is growing every day. This can only drive the cost per click up over time.

So you can see that Pay-Per-Click advertising is useful for getting traffic immediately. It’s important to have a website that effectively turns visitors into customers in order to make more money than you spend. Once you establish that however, PPC can be a powerful and profitable advertising method.

Advantages of Organic Search

+ Visitors Are Free – Visitors that find you through organic search results are totally free, so there’s a very high ROI on those clicks.

+ More Clicks – More searchers click in the organic search results than the PPC ads, so a #1 ranking in organic will bring you more targeted traffic than paying for #1 placement via PPC.

+ More Trust – Most searchers trust Google, and when they see that Google considers your site the #1 authority for their search term, most will inherently trust you as well, making it easier to convert those visitors into customers.

+ Less Long Term Financial Investment – The initial investment in an organic search campaign depends greatly on the competitiveness in your industry. It’s important to think of it as a long term investment. You won’t see immediate results, but by investing a little time and money each month, you can gradually build your site up to attract loads of free targeted traffic.

Disadvantages of Organic Search

- Ranking Takes Time –You may start seeing noticeable traffic increases within a few weeks to a few months. It all depends on the competitiveness of your industry.

- Requires Investment in Your Website – You’ll need to commit more of your time to get good organic rankings. With PPC, you simply drive visitors to a specific page and try to get them to convert. With organic search, you’ll need to build up a site full of good content that is useful to your visitors and portrays your company as the authority on the topic.

Combining Pay-Per-Click Advertising and Organic Search

The ultimate marketing strategy is usually a nice balance of both PPC and organic search. You can start driving traffic to your site now through pay-per-click while gradually building organic search rankings. As the site starts to rank highly for certain keywords in organic search, you may decide to stop bidding on those keywords on the PPC side.

In the end, no single advertising method is perfect for everyone. It all depends on your urgency to get sales, the amount you're willing to invest in your site and your long-term goals for your website. Whatever your situation, Bitwise Logic can customize a package that builds targeted traffic and increases sales while working within your constraints.