The Difference Between Organic vs Paid Search
In this podcast we discuss the difference between organic and paid search. In the podcast, we start by explaining what organic search and paid search are in simple easy to understand terms and how each are utilized by businesses to marketing their products and services. The podcast concludes with which of organic search or paid search delivers a better return on your marketing spend dollar. If after listening to the podcast and reading this article you determine that your business needs help understanding online marketing feel free to send us and email to discuss further if our services would be a good fit for your business or not.
Executive Summary
- Search engine optimizing a website to receive higher organic search engine results yields a better return on investment than paid search engine advertising
- Effective search engine optimization leads to higher organic search engine results
- Paid search (search engine advertising) can deliver immediate traffic but is costly and traffic to your website will cease once your budget runs out
- Over time, organic search result traffic to your website will continually increase if you continually conduct effective search engine optimization on your site
- Paid search is all search engine results that are paid advertisements
- Organic search is all search results that are not ads
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The difference between organic search versus paid search. Click the link below to find out.
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What is Organic Search
Organic search encompasses all non-paid search results that a search engine such as Google displays. An organic search result is displayed due to the merit of its content, how popular a certain website is, and how that content relates to the search keyword.
What is Paid Search
Paid search is also known as ads. Search engines will display ads alongside organic search results. This is the primary way search engines make money. Ads are nearly always displayed at the very top of a search result, or in a left/right sidebar. An example of a paid search result would be when a Google user searches for the term “laptop computer.” Google will display ads from several major computer stores (such as Apple or Dell) as well as a full range of organic content related to the keyword “laptop computer.”
How Does A Website Utilize Organic Search
A website can take advantage of organic search by submitting the website to Google to be indexed and then creating web pages that are based on certain keywords that the website is targeting. Over time, a website can increase the SEO of their website by conducting specific work and off the website, in order to rank higher. For more information on SEO, listen to podcast episode 8, entitled “what is SEO” or read the a quick overview of what SEO is by going to our What Is SEO page found in the services menu on this website.
How Does A Website Utilize Paid Search
Any website, no matter the size, can utilize paid search by setting up a Google AdWords account, and paying to rank for a certain list of keywords. Keywords are charged at a specific cost per click, which can range from a few cents up to a many dollars – depending on how competitive a keyword is. A monthly Adwords budget is set and Google will make sure that budget is spent only up to the maximum value set. Let us say that a monthly budget is set at $100, and each keyword that the company wants to rank for costs 50 cents per click. Over the course of a month, Google will display that companies ads such that they are clicked on 200 times, which maxes out the $100 budget.
Can Paid Search Increase The Organic Rank Of My Website
Paid search has no effect whatsoever on how a website ranks organically. A website may rank for a particular keyword on page 17 of Google, but with a high enough Adwords budget can still enjoy thousands of viewers per month from that same keyword via paid ads. If that AdWords campaign is ever canceled, that traffic will disappear instantly, with no effect on the organic rank of the site.
Is Paid Search Worth It
Paid search is a tricky area for websites. It will give guaranteed traffic, but the sales generated from if may not justify the cost as paid search ads are generally expensive. In addition, it only accounts for 6% of all search engine clicks. Large AdWords campaigns that are capable of bringing in high traffic numbers can cost thousands of dollars every month. For some websites that sell high-value products and services, AdWords may be worth it, but in general paid search almost always offers a negative ROI. In the rare cases where it does offer a positive ROI there are usually other marketing options available to the company where their dollars would get them a better ROI (like email marketing or search engine optimization). Instead of spending on paid search it is almost always better to invest your marketing dollars in other higher ROI marketing options. Only 20% of search traffic utilizes paid search results while 80% look at the top organic results. Click here to get more data on the return on investment of both paid and organic search engine marketing.
How Do I Rank Higher Organically
Ranking higher organically is done by creating meaningful content that Google searchers will want to read for a specific keyword and then search engine optimizing that page for that keyword. A website's organic rank does not cost them any amount per month. The only cost is the time and effort to get to that ranking, which you can do internally or have an expert do for you. Profitworks offers SEO services to websites who are looking to increase their organic rank, and as such the ROI from their website. In generally we see that SEO service usually generate a 275% ROI or an additional $2.75 in profit for every $1.00 spent. To learn more about if search engine optimization is worth the money click here.
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