Weighing the Options of Organic vs. Paid Search Optimization and Marketing

For anyone who has ever tried to get their website or blog site to show up on the first page of search engine rankings, you may already know what a challenging task this can be. If you have worked with methods to try to increase your ranking, you may already be familiar with different options to try to get on Google’s first page. Whether you are or not matters little, understanding your options and deciding which would work better for you is the important part. 

Understanding the Two Options

A paid search marketing approach is a way to ensure you end up on the first page of certain key search words by way of advertising. In other words, you are purchasing a spot to land on a Search Engine Result Page or SERP, based on the key term or words used. If you have ever heard of a Cost per Click or CPC approach to advertising, then you are already familiar with this a little. To rank higher on a SERP, you can bid to pay more for each click that results in someone using your ad from the matched up key search words.

The organic approach to search optimization is a more time consuming method that requires a “grass roots” type of approach to try to secure a spot on a SERP. While it will not land you in the spots that you would pay for through a paid search optimization method, you can still land on page one. Instead of buying your way into part of someone’s search results, you create content that earns you this placement. It is about not over saturating your use of key words and making them natural as well as relevant, which is what can earn you that first place page landing in relation to your keywords.

Which One Is Right for You?

At Sanctuary Marketing Group, we admit it, we’re biased towards organic search optimization.

We’ve found the total ROI for organic search marketing efforts beats paid search in the long run. With paid search, it’s one (click) and done. You pay for every single click with no lasting benefit to your long term marketing efforts.

We’ve had clients who were spending $20,000-$30,000 per MONTH on paid-per-click campaigns only to find the traffic vanish as soon as they would pause a campaign. By weening them off their Pay-Per-Click addiction, they’ve seen their cost-per-sale go down at the same time their total revenues were increased.

While paid search can be useful to accelerate traffic in the short term and as a tool to learn which keywords and offers provide the best conversion opportunities. We urge our clients to focus on an inbound marketing strategy rooted in delivering great content and lead conversion.

Focusing on an organic approach may mean you invest more time and effort in your attempts to show up on page one. But in the end, organic methods tend to be more trusted by those browsing and using the search engine.