Search engines play a vital role in offering exposure to a website and they are the portal to a vast web experience. This is particularly true for both small and large businesses that are looking to extend their reach on the Internet. Every online marketer tries his best to get his website at the forefront of search engine result pages. For this, marketers apply many techniques, out of which two most common techniques are organic search and paid search.
If you have targeted a certain audience and want them to find you in the ocean of other websites that are more or less offering the same services, both paid search and the organic search come in handy. These techniques allow your website to reach the top rankings on SERPs and stand out in the competition. However, there has been always a debate about what benefits marketers the most- paid search or organic search? This write-up will take on every aspect of paid search and organic search in order to formulate the right answer.
What Is Organic Search?
Organic search results are basically the catalog or list provided by the search engine algorithms. This listing is completely based on the content of the websites matching the keywords or phrases. Organic searches are entirely dependent on the content and quality of the website. Known to be the best way to gain online visibility, organic searches are monitored by marketers through search engine optimization (SEO). The common motivation of marketers applying organic search is to first appear on the first page of search engine rankings, and further lead their content marketing campaign to rank for specific keywords.
The benefits of an organic search are completely based on visibility on the web. The advantages will certainly be less if you fail to rank on the first page of SERPs. With that being said, here are some of the benefits that you get investing your efforts in organic search:
- Brand Influence and Credibility: Users take the help of the Internet to look for further information about products and services. For them, the top ranked websites on the search engines are authentic and they click on those websites looking for information. For marketers, organic search results are blessing if they can somehow manage to rank higher on the search engines. Not only does it establish their authority on the web, but they are also seen as a leader in their respective industry. With great trust and brand authority, there is more possibility of attaining higher click through rates.
- Popularity on the Search Engines: If you craft content that is of premium quality and covers a popular topic, your ranking for the content will be definitely high. Popular content is favored by both users and search engines and they generally have a longer presence on the web. The listing of a particular website might be high, owing to the long exposure of the evergreen content.
- Ranking: After you are able to achieve better rankings, it becomes quite simple to hold onto the position. Not only you get a leadership status, but you are also facilitated with the trust of search engines and users.
- CTR (Click through Rates): In order to be on the top of the search rankings, you do not always need to pay for the process, as the click through rate is fairly decent with organic search. For brands with a long-term buying cycle, this kind of intent is very necessary.
- Inbound Links: The organic search campaign drives the marketers to build a content marketing program. The requirement of high-quality content boosts their inbound links and increases the user engagement, owing to the superiority of the content.
What Is Paid Search?
Paid searches are a type of sponsored advertisements that brands avail for increasing their reach along with conversion rates. Marketers invest in paid ads that get showcased right above the organic search results when users make a search based on relevant keywords. This strategic placement of sponsored ads makes them more likely to be clicked due to their position above organic searches. However, the placement of paid ads is purely based on bidding procedure, as well as, the quality rating.
The Benefits of Paid Search
It does not come as a surprise that the benefits of paid searches are quite distinct compared to those of organic search listings. Here are the major advantages that you get with paid advertisements:
- Less Time-Consuming: The biggest reason why marketers focus on paid advertisements is due to their effective results in a short period of time. Compared to organic search rankings that take a long time to build, paid ads secure your position on SERP immediately.
- Specific Audience Targeting: Another major benefit of PPC campaigns is the outreach to certain audiences. This specific targeting is generally based on the income of the audience along with their educational level, age, location, and marital status and so on.
- Click through Rates: Unlike organic results, paid ads with higher buying intent will receive more clicks. From small startups to big businesses, everyone runs their own PPC campaign with an expectation to gain more click through rates.
The Final Verdict
In general, marketers who prefer inbound marketing tend to avoid paid search since it is more of an outbound form of marketing. However, it has been viewed recently that with the help of tools like Social Media Ads, marketers can work on both at the same time. Usually, with organic search campaigns, you have to wait for at least three months to see a rise in the traffic. This is not the case with paid search where you can get visitors soon after your ad goes viral on the search engine.
Apart from that, the boost in user engagement with paid search will provide you with more conversions after you optimize the leads from the landing page. Organic search is generally more cost-effective than its paid counterpart, but driving your focus in the right direction, even paid search can cost you less. Therefore, if you are not running on a tight marketing budget, paid search is the best option for your online marketing campaign.
