Paid Or Organic Search ?

Most Business Organisations both big and small have realised the necessity of having a presence on the internet. Many Organisations limit themselves to setting up a Company website and provide contact information. Those who realise the potential of being able to tap the customers online go one step forward and provide online services.

Whether the Organisation wishes to offer online sales or not, one of the basic marketing necessities vital for the business is the presence on the internet. When prospective customers are looking for products and services and when your competitors are present on the internet, do you have any option but to be advertising on the internet?.

Once the need for advertising on the internet has been established, the next relevant question that comes up is to choose between paid search or organic search for advertising. The technical aspects of development of the content and the website etc will be handled by the SEO specialists. However the marketing managers and the management need to understand some of the basic concepts that are relevant for their decision making and marketing plans.

Paid search as the word denotes, refers to online advertisements that are sponsored or paid for by the Company. These sponsored ads are displayed along with the organic search results.

The paid ads are built around specific target queries related to the product or the service that the Advertiser is trying to sell. These advertisements are retained only such time that the Company pays for each click.

Organic search ads on the other hand refer to the list of websites or results that are put forth by the search engines. On receipt of a query, the search engines use certain algorithms to search for thousands of web pages using the key words as given in the query, list out the web pages in the order of relevance of the content to the query and publish the same.

If you are the Marketing Manager, it is but natural that you are required to take a decision of choosing the Organic search option or the Paid search option. Making the right decision calls for understanding both options in detail.

Paid search advertising is generally built for a specific target audience. It caters to specific queries only. Since these are paid on per click basis, the effectiveness and viewership of these advertisements can be measured.

More over the Marketing Manager can have a direct control over how much is being spent on the paid search advertising for it is paid on per click basis. It is also likely that the viewers who click on the advertisement and visit the web page are serious buyers and the chances of conversion into sales in such cases is very high.

Organic search on the other hand does not involve any payments and is hence long lasting. The effectiveness of the Organic advertising is dependent upon the Content of the website provided and the SEO optimization. As long as the website gets listed on top of the list the viewers are likely to visit the website. The content displayed will determine whether it manages to get the viewer to be interested in contacting the Company and furthering his business interest or not.

In this case the quality of the content will also signify the value proposition to the viewer. It is highly effective in engaging the customer and providing him value in terms of information. This mode helps build the brand image of the Company in the long run.

In the long run the Organic search has been found to be more effective than paid search advertising. The data analysis shows that the percentage of people looking through the websites that are listed through the Organic search is much more than the percentage that visits the paid advertisements.

Paid search advertising can also be a highly effective option in case of short term sales campaigns and schemes that need high visibility and buzz.

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