Organic optimisation versus paid advertising

The debate between SEO and PPC has been going on for years. There are various ways to promote your website online. Optimisation and PPC are the most common methods used as well as the most effective. Both methods have  advantages and website owners should look at both methods and not look at them in the sense that only one or the other can be used.

Both methods should be looked at in each particular set of circumstances that surround the specific business as PPC has its place. Whereas SEO is the preferable option as to cost effectiveness and the long term effects in general.

Natural

SEO is based on organic or natural ranking in the various search engines, which use algorithms. These ranking results are based on the relevancy to the search being made. When an internet user does a search, you will always see the sponsored results at the top of the SERP, or at the side of the SERPs page. The highest ranking websites for that particular search will be displayed directly under the sponsored results.

An important part of ranking comes from webpage relevancy and the value of the content as it relates to that search. SEO is the process used to make a website or web page relevant for specifically chosen keywords.

SO is not as easy as PPC, it takes time for optimisation to build good ranking for a website, but costs less than running a PPC campaign. If the effort is put into optimisation the rewards reaped over time exceeds the costs put into it as the results are long term.

Paid

Running a PPC campaign means constantly putting funds into it. Each time that someone clicks on the sponsored link, it costs the business owner x-amount of money. PPC faces certain specific problems. Firstly people tend to be wary of sponsored results as they know it is advertising. Secondly, there is a lot of click-fraud and this means a lot of money can be wasted this way.

With a PPC campaign money is spent for the duration of the campaign and once it is over the sponsored placing in the SERPs disappear. Whereas with SEO the organic results goes on beyond that initial optimisation effort. It must be said that PPC gives immediate results. This is a good option to use for specific reasons such as promoting a new website. PPC is also excellent when doing promotion for a specific product or special service being offered.

Conclusion

Using reliable and ethical optimisation efforts bring a website long-term ranking results, although it is much slower than a paid campaign. The ranking achieved with SEO is of a “permanent” nature as that ranking will not simply disappear. It won’t disappear unless there is a fundamental shift in the search engine algorithms.

PPC is costly and the cost increases each year due to the competitiveness of paying for high search keywords. The sponsored ranking will disappear once the campaign is over. Thus PPC has its place for a fast ranking boost for specific reasons. However, search engine optimisation for natural ranking is long-term, less costly and the results are long term thus bringing long term benefits to that website.

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This entry was posted on Monday, September 7th, 2009 at 11:26 am and is filed under SEO. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.