What will the weather be like next week? When is Mother’s day? How do you tie a tie? Almost all of us will enter small simple questions such as these into… Google! In fact, Google has roughly 3.5 billion searches per day. As so many people traffic one search engine for various inquiries on a daily basis, businesses, products, and services all want to rank as high as possible on Google’s Search Engine Results Pages (SERP). However, in a widely competitive online market, ranking well, especially for commonly searched topics, can be a challenge. So, what is the difference between organic vs. paid searches? Keep reading to learn more about these two traffic-acquiring methods.
Understanding Organic VS. Paid Searches
When determining how your business wants to allocate its marketing funds, understanding the difference between organic vs. paid searches is critical. The main two methods for acquiring traffic for inbound marketing is organic vs. paid searches. The two main methods that are used for acquiring this traffic is through Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Organic Searches
When you type an inquiry into Google there will commonly be two or three featured ad links. Below these ad links, the organic searches will appear. These searches are appearing based purely off of the content of their page. Organic search focuses on the implementation of SEO to rank well on the SERP. So, the results that appear towards the top of the page, Google ranks as high-quality content. When users find and click on your link, it creates organic, unpaid, traffic.
Organic searches, however, do not provide immediate results. After spiders crawl and index websites, the information is stored in large databases, and will only be used to answer matching inquiries. However, 57% of B2B marketers say that SEO has the biggest impact on lead generation! We depend on Google on a daily basis. Likely our dependence on this search engine will not slow down. Therefore, understanding the benefits of SEO is a smart, cost-free, efficient way to increase traffic.
Paid Searches
Next, we’ll dive into paid searches! Paid search utilizes SEM (Search Engine Marketing). This type of marketing is a form of online marketing that exposes and promotes a business’s online platform in the SERP through paid advertising. Paid searches appear at the top of the search results, even above organic results. These results are labeled as an “Ad” however; many people still click these links. These links receive high amounts of traffic because they relate to the search inquiry, and therefore do not feel like a blunt advertisement. Therefore, paid ads have grown in popularity in recent years. Instead of waiting for your companies SEO to build up over time, businesses can pay to be featured at the top of a search results page.
Today, Google AdWords is the most used pay-per-click advertising program. Even crazier, Google AdWords launched in 2000 is only 18 years old, and was created by college dropout Scott Banister!
Organic VS. Paid Searches: Is One Better Than The Other?
After quickly learning about organic and paid searches, you may be asking the question, “Which is better?” The answer…neither! Depending on the current need of your company, one method may be better than the other. Paid searches provide fast results for a cost, while organic searches provide cost-free traffic. Understand the current needs of both your company and team, and decide what traffic acquiring method would be best!
There you have it! Do you have a good understanding of organic vs. paid searches? Comment your thoughts below!
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