Impact Group Marketing Blog

Organizations of all sizes are realizing the importance of online marketing, especially through search engines. However, after this realization comes a big decision to make - whether to capitalize upon SEO (Search Engine Optimization), Paid Advertising (Google Adwords), or a combination of the two. General SEO-based advertising, or Search Engine Optimization, is the practice of including content on your site that has the potential to improve your site’s visibility to search engines and their users – in other words, it can help your site show up more often in relevant searches. However, paid advertising is a method of advertising where a business can bid to have their ads appear in the sponsored section on search engine results pages. Basically, you bid to have your businesses’ ad appear within the sponsored content when someone types in a query including your previously-specified keywords.

How do they work?

Good SEO strategy works to improve your website's organic traffic. There are many things to look for when trying to improve your site’s organic traffic. First, and most important, make sure the writing on your website is clear, helpful, and descriptive. Explain your purpose in simple, easy-to-read language, and try to include words you think a user might search for when looking online for what you offer. If you do include search terms in your site copy, make sure you’re still talking to the people you hope will use your site, and not trying to talk to or trick the Google algorithm. There's no cost to appear in organic search results like Google's, and making small changes to your website to improve overall SEO can greatly impact your search rankings over time. Paid advertising, on the other hand, allows advertisers to bid for ad placement in a search engine's sponsored links when someone searches on a keyword that is related to their business offering. If you bid on a keyword, depending on your website’s quality score (which is an estimate of the quality of your ads, keywords, and landing pages) your ad might show up in the very top spot on the Google results page for that keyword. Every time your ad is clicked and sends a visitor to your website, you must pay the search engine a small fee. A lot goes into building a winning paid advertising campaign, from researching and selecting the right keywords to organizing those keywords into well-organized campaigns and ad groups, to setting up landing pages that are optimized for conversions. Search engines reward advertisers who can create relevant, intelligently targeted pay-per-click campaigns by charging them less for ad clicks.

Which is right for your business?

Ultimately, it’s up to you to decide which option is best for your business, but it’s worth considering that focusing on both SEO and paid advertising can help in different ways. Search Engine Optimization is a traditional cornerstone of successful online marketing because it gives your business the best chance of being found, even if the optimization process takes a while to get right. Paid advertising lets you reach customers more immediately, no matter how large or small your business is, and lets you customize your message and targeting on the fly. If you are a small local business with little competition, skipping out on paid advertising and relying on SEO may be the best choice for you as it is the most cost-effective. However, if you are an e-commerce business and your competition with large companies such as Amazon or Target, organic search results may be harder to compete with, no matter how much you dedicate to an SEO strategy.

In the End

In an ideal world, we would recommend using a combination of paid advertising and SEO in your online marketing tactics. They work better together by reinforcing and supporting each other. Using SEO and paid advertising together may give you the best chance of bringing traffic to your site in the short term, and enhancing your business’s presence online for long-term success. At Evolve, we offer customized development services for both SEO and paid advertisement marketing to help you grow your business. If you have questions about whether Search Engine Optimization of Paid Advertising is the right marketing solution for your business or organization, check out what services we provide here, or contact us today!