As an internet services company that works with both organic SEO and SEM, one of the questions that keeps coming our way is the difference between organic and paid search. Whether you’re working with a digital marketing agency or wondering how to power your business on your own, it’s important to know the difference between the two, as well as the pros and cons of each, in order to pick the one that best suits your company’s needs.
With Google processing over 3.5 billion searches a day as of 2020, Google search results are definitely where you want to be present. So getting back to the first question: What is the difference between organic and paid search?
The difference is really pretty simple. If you want to turn up as one of the first few search results without having paid for it, that’s organic search for you. On the other hand, if you pay to show up among those first coveted few, then it’s paid search.
Simple enough? Now that you get the basic difference, knowing which works better for you would require you to dive in a little deeper into the details.
Organic Search
Let’s begin with organic search. Google’s criteria for picking your page are pretty simple: quality and content.
Google will direct the highest amount of traffic to your page if it determines yours to be the most trusted source for people looking for your product. And Google is very particular about those top five results. If you make it there for a keyword, it speaks highly for your content.
Now moving up that search result ladder is not exactly rocket science but it needs an understanding of how Search Engine Optimisation works, coupled with time and effort to pull it off. Now, if you have the right expertise or if you work with an SEO agency who does, you don’t have to worry about it.
As an SEO company in Goa that prides itself on being experts in Search Engine Optimisation, we have a lot of clients who rely on us to help them with their Google ranking.
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Paid Search
Also known as Search Engine Marketing, paid search is essentially companies paying to appear in the first page of Google results, ABOVE those who have painstakingly climbed their way to the top.
The thing is, many consumers on the Internet may, in fact, be unaware that a result is paid and not organic. And with SEO getting increasingly competitive, paid search has become more popular in recent years. The most popular advertising program available today is Google’s AdWords.The idea is simple, you pay only for those who click on your ad and get a lead.
As a PPC agency in Goa, one of the things we do is not only help our clients make those paid results clickable but also help them create informative and attractive landing pages that convert.
So, Organic vs. Paid Search: which one works best for you?
While most inbound marketers used to avoid paid search in the past, as already mentioned, it’s now becoming common to use a combination of both SEO and SEM, as search engine optimisation itself is competitive and requires time and patience, albeit the outcome is more stable.
So to answer your question, if your need is urgent – paid may be the way to go but paid search is not going to be very pocket-friendly in the long run. So, your best bet is to find the golden mean between organic and paid search that works for you. And consulting an expert SEO and PPC company in Goa is one of the ways you can go about making the decision.
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