Today, search engines are one of the easiest ways for existing and prospective customers to find your company. Because of this, getting your website to show up on search engines is extremely important. Both paid and organic search are ways to display your website, but each has different challenges. While organic search costs nothing, a high ranking can take lots of time and effort to gain. And while paid search ads put your website at the top of the page, they can be costly to maintain and aren’t an indication of your website’s quality. When deciding how to focus your efforts on paid vs. organic search, there are several things to keep in mind.
The Best of Both Worlds
When deciding which method to use, it’s not so much a question of paid vs. organic search, but rather how to combine the two in the best way possible. Paid search (pay per click, PPC) and organic search (search engine optimization, SEO) can both help your business, and can compliment each other. One of the benefits of SEO is that clicks generated organically cost your business nothing. If your employees have the time and resources, they can optimize your website to allow search engines to navigate it easily, finding the information they need to show it on their results pages. By ranking well on organic search, you can save money on advertising, and keep your website in front of potential customers.
And with PPC advertising, although it requires money, this helps you get around the waiting period that SEO often requires. With PPC advertising, your website can show up right at the top of the results page, and start directing customers to you almost immediately. Connor Lahey’s article “SEO vs PPC: Are You Making the Most of Them?” shares more benefits of a dual approach. Through retargeting, you can show ads specifically to customers who have visited your website before. And by collecting data on the paid ads that you run, you can use these insights to influence your SEO efforts. These are just two benefits of a dual approach, and show that your best bet might just be to use both PPC and SEO.