Paid Advertising VS. Organic SEO

If you are a relatively new website owner and are just setting out in the business of online marketing for your company, you will firstly need to understand that there are two key methods of advertising your business on the internet. These are paid advertisements (or Pay Per Click ads) and free SEO techniques that manipulate search methods to put your website at the top of search engine returns. Which technique is more effective is a hotly debated topic in IT circles, and rarely is any definitive conclusion reached. This is no attempt to provide an end to the debate either, but simply explore the pros and cons of each in order for you to make up your own mind between paid or free online advertising.

Pay Per Click ads appear in prominent positions beside search engine listings and are sold by Google and other search engines on the basis that you only pay when a user clicks on your ad. The amount that you pay per click is determined by the popularity of the key words your ad targets and the location that the ad appears on the page. Paid advertisements such as PPC ads are often favoured because they are quick to produce and can have instantaneous results, however, if you are not able to spend enough for the right key words you could end up losing a great deal of money equally as fast. Like anything, the effective use of paid advertising requires thoughtful planning, skill, experience and analysis.

Cost-free online marketing strategies, such as organic SEO tactics, are easily as successful as paid advertisements, if not more so. This is because “Google it” has become our main approach to discovering absolutely anything about everything, meaning that most people find the information they require from typing in key search terms and scanning the ranked results listed by search engines. Although paid ads are often positioned alongside the organic search results, most often people tend to follow the naturally generated links because it is assumed that they are of a higher quality. That is, websites that have quality content achieve popularity online without needing to pay for it. This may not always correlate – they may just operate a lot of smart SEO strategies – but that doesn't change the fact that they will receive the most clicks and back links. The downside of organic Search Engine Optimisation is that the process of achieving results can be more long term and time consuming as well as complex. Many SEO factors, such as gathering back-links, and selecting the correct key words and key word density to optimise your site, will require considerable expertise.

At the end of the day, seeking the advice of an expert in online marketing and SEO may be the best approach to deciding which course of ad action is best for your needs. Although getting organic SEO tactics right may be difficult for amateurs, once an aggressive Search Engine Optimisation campaign is under way, the results can be mind blowing. The results of paid advertising can be similarly effective; however, there is a much higher level of risk involved because your finances are directly involved. Neither approach should be viewed as quick fix solutions to a lagging business because both SEO and paid ads require a significant amount of research and skill in order to operate successfully.