Difference: Paid and Organic Search

What's the Difference Between Paid and Organic Search Engine Listings?

On other pages on this site we've stated that both organic search engine listings "SEO" and sponsored or paid search advertisements "PPC" drive relevant targeted traffic to your website by leveraging a presence in the search engines. That said, they have some key differences:

1) Location of PPC and Organic Listing

The most noticeable difference is where your listing would appear on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) under each method.

The paid listings on a Google results page are displayed as the top two or three listings (in a light blue background and labeled "sponsored results"), as well as on the right hand side column. Note that there are not always PPC ads in the top region, generally you'll only find that for search phrases where there are a lot of firms bidding for traffic.

Organic listings are also sometimes just thought of as the "regular" listings.

2) Traffic Potential of PPC and Organic Listing

Another difference is the traffic potential of each method. Its generally much faster to obtain paid listings. It only takes a day or so to set up a campaign, although it is an ongoing process to manage it efficiently.

The organic listings tend to produce much more traffic for the same search phrase, all things being equal. Generally most studies show users are three to five times as likely to click on a site in the organic listings than to click on a paid ad in the search engines.

3) Cost of PPC and Organic Listing

PPC (pay-per-click) literally costs per click. With Yahoo you bid for position – the higher the bid the higher the position you'll get. In some cases the top positions are well worthwhile, and in some cases you can find better value outside of the top spot. With Yahoo, it's a set price for each click.

Google's pricing is much more dynamic, its not really possible to give a true cost, but rather an average cost is used. Looking for a real number here? Well we've seen clicks cost as low as 5 cents per click to as high as $20+ per click – so it truly depends on your market, the competition, etc.

SEO doesn't cost "per click". Sometimes its referred to as "free" traffic, being that you don't pay per click. Rather, the cost is simply much less tangible – but it does exist. Essentially the costs for SEO are the costs of building a great site, building awareness about your site online, optimizing your site, and possibly hiring an SEO expert as a consultant.

4) Implementation of PPC and Organic Listing

The last key difference between organic and PPC is the "how" – or the implementation steps. Getting high rankings for organic listings means building a great site, "optimizing" the code and copy, and building a site worthy of citations and references from other related sites (often measured as links to your site).

PPC rankings can require much less work to obtain. To optimize they also require a time investment, although its possible – for a price – to simply bid more and more and get tons of traffic… if you are willing to pay for it. PPC listings are simply ads for your site, whereas organic rankings are taken from your site. As such, you do not need to do anything to your site for PPC rankings, though we may recommend otherwise so as to improve your visitor to action conversion rates…

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> View our Pay per Click Management Services

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