In today’s world companies are looking for every way they can to get their business out to potential customers. One major way companies are found is through search engines. Just take a minute to think of how many things you “google” on a daily basis. When we do not know something or are looking for something Google is usually our first stop. Companies also know this and that is why SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and SEM (Search Engine Marketing) is so important.
SEO is something all companies look to increase as the more visible their company is the more likely customers will find them. Search engine optimization refers to where the company falls in the search results. As we know, when we use Google and search a key word, many different results come up. Search Engine Optimization determines which companies show first. For example if you were to search “Sporting Goods” why does Dick’s Sporting Goods come up before Bob’s sporting goods? This would be due to search engine optimization and other factors which will de discussed later.
Organic search strategies refer to when a company does different free things to try and boost their SEO. This would include things such as website optimization, creating different content (blogs, videos, etc), Select keywords, use keywords in website content. These are all ways to organically help your SEO. While free options are great, especially for small businesses, there are cons to the organic approach. While Google is an amazing search engine, they change their algorithms quite often so what works one week may not work the next when it comes to how searches work. SEO also takes a while to get going, typically at least 6 months to see results. This means you will not see any immediate results. The last and probably most important con is that SEO can be complicated and sometimes hard to do correctly (McGinley, 2021).
Paid strategies are part of SEM and include things like paid ads or PPC (pay per click). By using paid strategies it will increase your visibility when someone searches for one of your selected key words. For example, a small sporting goods store could use a paid ad to appear at the top of the search results when someone searches “sporting goods”. Costs for these ads vary greatly. PPC ads are used by companies where the company pays each time a customer clicks on the link (you will see these at the top of Google search results with Ad then the website). The paid options has many pros such as quick results, your company appearing before organic rankings, as well as the ability to target specific customers. While there are pros to paid strategies, the cons may outweigh them depending on your business. Cons include the sometimes high cost to ads, lower profits due to having to spend money to gain customers, and if you run the same ad to long it may be overlooked by customers (McGinley, 2021).
In conclusion both options can be very valuable to companies. For most companies a mix of both will help your business gain customers and website traffic. It is important to remember that you need SEO as a stable base so you do not have to consistently run ads in order to gain customers. Making sure you have an effective website, create content and adjust keywords when needed you will be able to work towards your goal of great SEO.
References:
McGinley, C. (2021, June 24). SEO vs. ppc: When to optimize and when to pay for traffic. HubSpot Blog. Retrieved September 12, 2021, from https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/tabid/6307/bid/1514/paid-search-vs-organic-search.aspx
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