This is a question we get asked a lot!…“Which is better pay per click or SEO?”

They are both a form of search marketing, both are key to an internet marketing strategy though the similarities end there…

All search engine marketing is advertising whichever way you look at it. Your either spending money or time to get you listing noticed and drive traffic to your website

With Pay Per Click the process works as follows…

1) You choose your keywords for your ad

2) You put some money in,

3) Your ad appears when the keywords are searched on,

4) You get your money back in the form of conversions, which may be enquiries or actual sales from those searches.

It really is that that simple and you can see the results straight away and decide whether this is the bets form of advertising for you.

Search Engine Optimisation is a bit more tricky and doesn’t yield results as quickly but it’s a better long term strategy. In changing the page content and links a search engine will rank your website differently and it’s the task of manipulating these content and links to improve the ranking and is very much ongoing.

Once you get that great position, you won’t stay there forever without changes especially if you are in a very competitive market so monitoring of the campaign is key to its success.

Unlike with PPC (Pay Per Click) you are not allocating a budget but don’t assume that it is therefore free! A lot of time and effort goes into the research and analysis of keywords and content and also the implementation of the terms into the website itself.

What are the benefits of PPC?

• Immediate returns
• Great for product / service launches
• Visitors are more transactional

What are the disadvantages with PPC?

• Can be expensive
• Google discriminates against new advertisers
• Most searchers use organic listings

What are the benefits of SEO?

• Most users click on the organic listings
• Most searches in Google are long tail searches
• Over 25% of searches in Google every day have never been made before

What are the disadvantages of SEO?

• Long term marketing strategy
• Algorithm changes can affect rankings overnight
• Competitors often have more marketing budget to affect changes
• Diminishing returns as the internet becomes denser

Search Engine Marketing in 2010 and beyond…

So how you can maximise your presence and rankings in the search engines.?

Looking forward the rise of Social Media has been phenomenal and we can’t see it slowing down any time soon. The use of Social networking tools such as Facebook and Twitter to reach target markets will spread and we maintain that a balance between SEO, PPC, SM and good old fashioned word of mouth will all play their part…The goal – to get people to find your site by any means possible and maximise the return on any investment.