Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Pay Per Click V's Organic SEO

Now, you have more options. You can attempt to make your website search engine compliant to the letter and stay in the listening by working on optimizing the content to ensure its relevancy, content authenticity, and bot search ability makes it a top page ranker. Or you can purchase ads directly on search engine sites and other websites who earn to host them. Why don't we take a closer look into these and see how using either one, or perhaps both would be wise for your website.

Cross Comparing

To decide if you should rely on one or both venues of advertising, you need to know the advantages and disadvantages of each. Then, you need to take a careful look at your current financial situation, your goals both long term and immediate, and then you can make a decision of its it worth your while.

Pay Per Click

• Instant traffic, once you purchase it, you will start seeing your own ads up almost immediately.

• Being able to target your desired traffic. You can filter which keywords or web content brings your ads where.

• Cost to revenue ratio. The less you spend compared to the more you earn from the increased traffic.

• Every click costs money.

• A reason for customers to buy from you. If they click on your ad but have no reason to buy from you, then what is the point?

• Over time, the competition for those top ad spots may drive up the cost of their clicks.

• Over time and instantly PPC can be a great tool for driving traffic and boosting sales.

Organic Search Results

• Free traffic. You pay nothing for advertising, and people just find you.

• People prefer the free results over the PPC results. More chances that they will actually buy.

• People trust search engines to provide reliable websites with good integrity on their search results.

• Less investment. You don't need to invest right away to build traffic. Good paying and repeat customers build with time, so your business grows just with your content and trust.

• Higher ranking could take time if you do not know exactly how to set up your website to be the top search results.

• You need to commit more time to the content of your website to get the most relevant search results.

• You need to make sure your website is compliant with the guidelines for the search engine and that it maintains good integrity through reputable links and back links from other sites.

For best results you should combine the two. If your website is based solely on content and you sell nothing, no products, this "free" advertising may be the way to go. But if you really want a site that pays well, then you should think about investing in some form of online advertising. A great site would combine a balance of the two and strive for the best ratio over all.

Therefore, keeping your website user friendly and geared towards the end user, the human internet web surfer, is just good practice for both you and the integrity of your site. On the other hand, doing so will ensure that you are not booted from the main search results or the PPC ads. In the long run, doing the opposite and trying the other methods of driving traffic or search results on the market can be damaging, even lethal to your business. Buying traffic, using link farms, and purchasing any form of advertising that is not backed by major corporations such as Google, and other search engines may result in theft of your proprietary information on your website. Therefore it is wise to adhere to the saying "if it looks too good to be true, it usually is." So don't fall for hype, don't fall into the trap of bad business. Your websites reputation is what ultimately determines your profits!

In Either Case

If you deice to aim for just one method or both, designing a well balanced and informative website is key to good traffic flow. An easy to navigate website with easily index able content works best in the long run. After all, if you do not comply with the rules and guidelines set forth by search engines, then you might as well kiss your website good bye. Search engines have to maintain a level of integrity for the websites they display both in the search results and in the PPC ads. After all, if you were a customer and you repeatedly used one method of finding what you need, then that method become over run with false websites and deceiving advertisements, wouldn't you go somewhere else to search and purchase goods and services?

Tony Smith is regularly writing for http://www.e-telegence.com, a UK based company, who are experts in web design and Search Engine Marketing web design Scotland, search engine optimization

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