Best ROI for your Marketing Budget Showdown – SEO vs. Paid Advertising

Everyone knows that the object of Search engine optimization (SEO) campaigns is to generate Web traffic and improve the ranking of websites for relevant keywords. However, businesses are in a hurry to get immediate results, and that’s perfectly understandable. This is where Paid Advertising plays an important role. If you get your ad campaign going correctly, then your website will get increased traffic right from day one.

Search Engine Optimization focuses on regular “organic” results on search engines such as Yahoo, Bing and Google. When it comes to paying for a click, it doesn’t apply if the website appears in the normal search results.

Somehow does SEO vs. paid advertising compare?

Paid advertising can generate visitors much faster than SEO and can push your website to the front pages, but you need to remember that it’s very expensive and sometimes can cost you many dollars per click. Some businesses have actually lost thousands of dollars in just a day because they were advertising for the wrong keywords. Regardless of whether those who clicked made purchases or not, the businesses had to pay for each and every click.

Typically, people are suspicious about any form of advertising for they know it’s a way to get them buy the thing you’re selling. That’s why paid search is looked on with skepticism and most often the ads are overlooked. Paid advertising is a short term investment that has short term results. So although you might get traffic almost immediately with paid search, when you stop the payment, there will also be an end to visitors.

Not so with SEO—the plodder- it offers better and greater value in search marketing. Of course it’s not going to work miracles overnight for you, but you can be sure it will not only save you money but also help you long-term by pushing you a couple of notches higher, if you do things the way they ought to be done.

There are more reasons than one as to why SEO works better and provides lasting results:
Unlike paid search, which will get you visitors because you have paid for it, SEO will help get visitors because the website is great. Good Web pages and strong links pointing to your site will ensure that you get high rankings with SEO. Also, people trust organic search results much more than they do paid ads.

Yes, this way it does take much longer to get to the top of Google or any other search engine’s rankings, but once you’re there, you’re fine. You just have to do all that you can to ensure that you remain at the top and this means that you’re constantly working to improve your website. You need to optimize the pages of your website, update the content, write new content, make the website better and keep those visitors coming, staying and buying. A lot of work no doubt, but worth it because of the revenue it ultimately brings.

The power of social media is only growing and no one can afford to ignore it- least of all organic SEO. That’s why it integrates with Facebook and Twitter very well. Linking websites and pages to social media helps you in increasing the amount of links you get from various sites, resulting in better rankings in Google’s regular results. All this has a positive result on your SEO campaigns.

SEO is thus an investment – a long term one – that renews itself every time you optimize a Web page, write a new, informative blog post, and introduce creative, compelling content. In short, the harder you work, the more SEO rewards you.

In the long run, SEO has greater value than marketing that is paid for to be searched. As someone said, “If you have a business that is meant to stay, SEO is the way to go.” SEO will boost your website’s performance and ranking not only on the giant search engine- Google, but also on Yahoo and Bing too.

Surveys have shown that “organic SEO results are 8.5x more likely to be clicked on than paid search results!” That shows that users who use search engines can spot the difference that lies between organic and sponsored paid search. It’s clear that when the pros and cons of SEO vs. Paid advertising are weighed, SEO emerges a clear winner.

Without decrying paid search, it’s only for those who have the money and need website visitors immediately. It’s a great opportunity for those who are launching their company for the first time, it’s a great way to build instant brand awareness and get instant exposure. But that’s about it. It’s a good complement to SEO, but can never replace it. The rules for search engines keep changing all the time and at times it can be rather frustrating but keeping abreast and working towards optimizing your website can pay rich dividends.

At the end of the day, SEO ranks higher and can fetch a much better return on investment. You just need to be patient and work hard to improve your website. SEO will reward you well.