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What Are The Benefits of Organic Search Vs Paid

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What Are The Benefits of Organic Search Vs Paid

As a small business owner, you are well aware of the importance of driving traffic to your website, but what is the best way? Is it preferable to market using pay per click (PPC) marketing techniques or via organic searches? As it turns out, each method has its own advantages, and only you can determine which is better for your enterprise.

What is Organic Search?

When someone enters a string of keywords in an attempt to find correlating websites, the results that come up on the left hand side are called organic search results. For example, if you sell pearl earrings on your website, you need to optimize your site to draw people in who have searched for that particular phrase using Google or another search engine. The more you use search engine optimization (SEO) and rich content to bring in results similar to your target words, the higher your site will be in the rankings. Your goal should be to gradually move it up onto the first page of results and ultimately into the top three.

With high rankings comes credibility; people often assume that if a site shows up at the top of the rankings, it is the most relevant in the industry for the term they are searching. If your content is also evergreen, meaning that it is not dated and can be just as applicable years from now, this will also help your position in the SEO rankings. These qualities feed off each other; in other words, if you reach the top of the list, you are more likely to stay there because you are perceived as an authority. Organic searches also tend to yield higher click through rates, meaning that people are more likely to go to your website.

There are some drawbacks of organic search that you should also consider. It takes time, often months, before the benefits pay off. Only you can know if you have that time to spare. In addition, either you or someone else needs to spend time creating content and tweaking your SEO strategies. Rankings domination won’t happen without hard work.

What is Paid Search?

When a user conducts an Internet search using certain keywords, he or she often comes upon paid ads that are sponsored by the businesses in question. These are paid search results, and they typically appear to the right of organic search results. The precise placement of these ads depends on a bidding process as well as a quality score determined by the search engine. As soon as your payment for the ad’s placement goes through, you will immediately see it in the results. Furthermore, you can target the audience you want to reach by selecting factors such as age, sex and income level. You will definitely get more results if you pay for terms that predict purchases or cite specific brand names.

As you might expect, paid searches have their disadvantages as well. For one thing, they can be very costly; the most competitive, desirable keywords require the highest payments. For busy entrepreneurs and people who are novices in this arena, juggling these campaigns can demand time and expertise that they simply do not possess. Furthermore, ads disappear as soon as the payment period is up. Finally, consumers tend to distrust paid ads, believing that businesses are solely in it for a quick sale.

In the end, you will gain the highest degree of success by getting the best of both worlds through using both organic and paid search. This enables you to have non-time-sensitive content and credibility while also enjoying a kingly position at the top of the rankings and benefiting from higher click through rates. Why not take advantage of all of the opportunities that organic and paid searches can offer? Your bottom line will thank you.

6 SEO Ranking Factors You Must Know

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6 SEO Ranking Factors You Must Know

Search engine optimization, commonly known as SEO, is evolving as quickly. What was cutting-edge a year ago may already be on the way out. That is why you need to constantly keep your finger on the SEO pulse if you want to put it to work for you and your business. Here are just a few of the most noteworthy Google ranking factors that you should bear in mind.

1. Link Building Isn’t What it Used to Be

Not so long ago, building links was viewed as one of the hottest ways to drive traffic to your site. It was accomplished in a variety of ways. You could write editorials, comments or articles and submit them to online sites, thus creating links that would bring people to your home page. Another method was to directly contact websites and ask that they include your link, perhaps in exchange for a free e-book or downloadable program that you might offer to their patrons. Finally, you could create links by signing a site’s guest book or forum or by commenting on a blog entry. Although these strategies have not totally lost their luster, the winds are changing. Now, experts point you toward creating substantial, relevant content that will attract visitors. Don’t waste your time on empty signatures or vapid comments; they won’t yield you any upward progress in the rankings anymore.

2. Don’t Forget to Mention Citations and Brand Names

Anyone who is using Google to conduct an online search wants quality information – and they want it to appear right at the top of the rankings. For that reason, Google is constantly employing strategies to keep spammers and purveyors of inferior or empty content far down the list, if not off the rankings altogether. To accomplish this goal, Google recently implemented the Penguin algorithm update. If a site has an overabundance of similar inbound links or sub-par, inferior websites, it results in an algorithmic penalty. Unfortunately, the practice of link building often leads to these spammy links, which is why we are recommending that you cut back on that once-revered practice. Instead, devote your energy to mentioning legitimate brands and linking to credible websites. It is much more difficult to fake this, and you just might be rewarded with a higher SEO ranking.

3. Let the Grapevine Work for You

It is absolutely impossible to over estimate the power of social media in today’s e-commerce milieu. Likes on sites such as Facebook and Instagram are better than gold to companies eager to sell their products. It just stands to reason that brands with a wide and vocal fan base will garner more attention and therefore more traffic. What’s more, social media sites are quickly becoming search engines in their own right. They host fan pages for brands both obscure and well known and should not be ignored for that reason.

4. Don’t Underestimate the Importance of the User Experience

In recent months, the smart people at Google have recognized that a user’s positive experience can make all the difference. One of the best ways to foster this is by making your website as intuitive and user-friendly as possible. When people enjoy their experience on your site, they are far more likely to make a return visit. Repeat traffic translates to quality in the Google algorithms, leading to the potential for a rise in the SEO rankings for you. Harness this by writing snappy and compelling title tags and meta descriptions that will encourage users to click through to your site when it comes up on the search engine. Pique their curiosity; lure them with genuine benefits; call your customers to action. Your ultimate goal in terms of optimizing the search engines is to keep your visitors on your site for as long as possible. The more unique and interesting you make your internal links, the more likely your guests are to explore them and to feel more and more at home on your page.

5. Make Your Site Mobile-Friendly

Increasingly, people are using their tablets and smartphones to access websites. If your company site isn’t set up to accommodate this trend, you won’t just lose mobile customers; you will also languish in the SEO rankings. These days, Google’s algorithm automatically elevates sites that can be accessed on mobile devices. Just do everything you can to ensure that your page loads quickly. If you aren’t sure how mobile-friendly your site is, you can easily test it by going to one of any number of websites designed for that purpose.

6. Don’t Forget About Local SEO

Thanks to Google’s Pigeon algorithm update that was unveiled in 2014, local SEO, always an important way to reel in customers, has gained even more prominence. With the refinements in Google Maps and other GPS technology, it has become even more crucial to have accurate location information about your business. This starts with your Los Angeles area business name, address and telephone number. Your website address should also be both correct and visible. Be sure to include your establishment on a Google My Business page, and take advantage of any other opportunities you can think of, including social media exposure, paid advertisements and customer testimonials.

In a nutshell, you and Google can now work together more smoothly than ever, with the goal of providing your customers with the most intuitive, content-rich and user-friendly experience possible. To the extent that you furnish these attractive elements, Google will reward you by elevating your site in the rankings. The bottom line is that Google and other search engines are getting a lot smarter. As long as you provide the quality links and information your visitors truly want, both you and your customers will win.

 

Should I Use AdWords if I’m Doing SEO?

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One of our favorite pastimes seems to be complaining about ads: how many there are, how annoying we find them, etc. Even so, companies continue to employ ads as a strategy to get people to buy their products for a reason: They are effective. After watching just one showing of a Super Bowl commercial, consumers are 6.6% more likely to buy the product. With those statistics, you too will probably purchase ads to promote your business at some point.

When it comes to ads, you have many options, from fancy television productions to radio, bulletin boards and billboards. Feel free to use any or all of these, but don’t forget the power of promoting your company online. Doing so is particularly necessary in a bustling metropolitan market such as Los Angeles. One of the best ways is through Google AdWords. AdWords is a program that businesses like yours can use to make and control their own advertisements. Once you create an ad, it is displayed in Google’s search engine results pages (SERPS), on partner sites that have AdSense or the Google display network. You can either pay per click or per thousand impressions on your ad.

AdWords is a very effective tool that you can keep in your business promotion arsenal, but don’t limit yourself to using it to the exclusion of other strategies. If you already have an organic SEO campaign going, by all means don’t shut it down. This method of driving traffic to your site via content that you write and links to your site that you place on compatible web pages can work hand in hand with AdWords to enhance the quantity and quality of customers who eventually click through to your page. Succeeding in business is a challenge for anyone, particularly if you’re operating in the busy Southern California area with loads of competition. Therefore, use traditional advertisement, word of mouth, organic SEO and AdWords to stack the deck in your favor.