Saturday, July 24, 2010

Search Engine Optimisation Versus (PPC) Pay Per Click

Organic search engine optimisation and Pay pr click advertising are the two main methods of online marketing. Both these forms of online marketing are aimed at getting highly targeted visitors to your website by making your website rank on search engine results for the keywords that you are targeting.

Organic search engine optimisation refers to the search results that appear in the main centre section of the search results. Ranking within organic search engine results cannot be bought and ranking is a result of organic non-biased steps taken over a period of time. It is dependent on the overall popularity of your website on the internet in general among other on site factors. Organic listings are the results that appear in the main section of a search engine such as Google when we search for something. Pay per click advertising on the other hand refers to the paid listing or sponsored results that appear on the right of the search results page and not in main middle section of the page.

Pay per click result is paid for and results are almost immediate to achieve. However there are many drawbacks. The recent years have seen an exponential rise in competition and a steep rise in pay per click costs. Click fraud is another rising concern where an advertiser may be charged for clicks that are not by genuine customers.

1) Many surveys and search engine marketing studies have pointed than users are more likely to click on organic search results that appear on the main section of the page rather than the paid listings that appear as ads on the right.

2) Organic listings are non-biased and cannot be bought. As such users trust the results more than the paid listings which are a result of paid advertising. The conversion rate for organic listings is much higher than for paid listings.

3) Rising cost of pay per click. Pay per click campaigns are becoming more and expensive day by day as competition is increasing. It is common now a days to be pay as much as £1 or £2 per click for a op 5 position in pay per click campaigns like Google ad words.

4) The results of organic search engine optimisation campaign are more permanent that pay per click. In pay per click the results stop almost immediately at the end of the campaign whereas in organic listings the rank remains.

Pay per click advertising also has its advantages and is a much quicker way to get results. This is useful to advertise events and other marketing campaigns that cannot be planned months in advance. Organic search engine optimisation is a time consuming task and listings often take months to achieve.

In the long run investing an organic search engine optimisationis beneficial. It has lower costs and offers a high return on investment. Once a favourable ranking has been achieved it is more permanent. In pay per click the results will stop immediately when the payment has stopped and the campaign comes to an end. Organic search engine optimisation (SEO) campaign also has a wider coverage and generates maximum exposure for your business.


Organic search engine optimisation is hence a better rounded approach to online marketing and has a much wider coverage. Although you may not see the result within the first few months it will be an extremely useful marketing investment for any business. The benefits of an organic search engine optimisation far outweigh any risks involved with investing in a one year organic search engine optimisation campaign.

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