Did you know organic SEO and paid search address over 5.6 billion Google searches a day? People are constantly searching for answers to their questions and some of those answers include the specific solution that your business provides. With all that searching going on, there must be a way to somehow manipulate the search engine results to help encourage your business’ solution to show up.
Good News: There is! Organic SEO ( Search Engine Optimization) and Paid Search are two ways that businesses can leverage digital marketing methods to improve their placement within search engine results.
Organic SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
First, let’s identify what Organic SEO is. Organic SEO is the natural, unpaid placement of a website within the search engine results for specific keywords or key phrases. Some of the methods that Loud Canvas uses in order to achieve a better ranking on organic search engine results are keyword analysis, back-linking and link-building. There is absolutely no money spent paying Google to improve your ranking in search results–The work is all a direct result of manual back end improvements made to a website.
Google is a trusted resource and wants to make sure they provide the best search results. There are numerous factors that go into where a site ranks within a search, that have to be addressed when doing organic SEO. Google give more credit to sites that are technologically up-to-date, secure with SSL and mobile-friendly. Credit is also given to sites that are linked to from other sites. When one site links to another, referencing a topic or otherwise, this says something about the legitimacy of a business, especially if the business linked to the site is a popular site.
While organic SEO costs less, it takes more time to achieve results than PPC. In doing the foundational work of organic SEO, you’ll be increasing your business’ digital presence and increasing your ranking in search engine results. Many links that you develop will lead back to your site and if you’re doing it right, you’ll be creating brand awareness along the way.
Benefits of Organic SEO
- Builds trust and credibility
- Increases your brand awareness
- Receives approximately 90% more traffic than paid search traffic
- Increases website referrals
Paid Search (‘Pay Per Click’ aka PPC)
From a searchers perspective, knowing the difference between PAID Search and Organic SEO is important because this will help you determine the relevancy of the search results. Paid Search shows up at the top, at the bottom and to the right of the search result page. Below you can see that there is a little icon to the left of the results that reads “Ad.” This icon is so subtle that many searchers may overlook it and view the ad as the same as all the rest of the results.
Benefits of Paid Search
The main benefit of utilizing paid search is an immediate increase in traffic to your site. However, just because you have tons of traffic to your site, does not mean that you’re going to have great conversion rates. A conversion is identified by the action you wish visitors to take on your site. This could be filling out your contact form, or buying a product. Before you utilize paid search, it’s important to make sure your site is optimized to convert.
Another advantage of paid search is that you only pay for the clicks that people take to get to your site. If someone views your paid search result and doesn’t click on it, you won’t be charged. You can set a budget that fits your needs, and Google will work within those set parameters.
Nowadays, there is technology that evaluates ad performance and bids for ads in real-time. As if traditional display advertising isn’t enough with its powerful targeting and metrics, now Real-time Ads( RTA) creates an additional element of real-time to the list of deliverables. RTA uses Real-time bidding ( RTB). After a marketer enters in the maximum bid, advertising space is auctioned off within milliseconds. Campaigns performance can be viewed in real-time to determine which ads are working and which may need to be adjusted for better performance.
Remarketing – Paid Search’s Secret Advantage
Remarketing is a great advertising method that is available with paid search. Let’s say, for example, you Googled “ Nike shoes”. After reviewing the search results, you’ve clicked on a site to see if they had what you were looking for. Remarketing happens after you’ve left the site, even days afterward. You could be on a different site and see ads for Nike shoes. This is not a coincidence. This is called remarketing and the benefits are fantastic. Brand awareness improves, conversion rates increase and the appropriate audience is defined.
Let’s recap the benefits of paid search.
- Increased traffic to site immediately
- You only pay for clicks
- Evaluate ad performance in real-time.
- Use Remarketing
So, which should you choose?
Now that you’re more aware of the differences between the 2 ways to improve your search engine results, which will you choose? Sometimes you can choose both. Sometimes, depending on the industry, individual sites, budget, and the client’s needs, it’s advisable to work on organic SEO first. This allows the website to get up to par for optimal conversion. Then, on the other hand, it can be very advantageous to work on both PAID search and Organic SEO at the same time. This allows for sales to start coming in right away while the backend is being optimized for continued organic growth further down the road.
If you’re not sure which is best for you, just contact us and we’ll be happy to recommend the best route.
