Search Engine Optimization Tips: Developing A Strategy For Balancing Paid vs Organic Search

In order to develop a clear overall search strategy, you need to:

• Understand the differences including the pros and cons of each approach.
• Consider some key factors that will impact your strategy
• Define and implement the best strategy aligned to your specific business needs

Key Characteristics of Organic

To achieve good rankings and traffic you must:

• Work on your website content to optimise it for your target keywords
• Work to attract relevant external links from websites of high authority
• Your rankings on the search engines will then be determined by how well you have done the above work
• You cannot predict exactly what your final rankings will be
• Ranking improvement swill require time and effort in making changes to your website content or obtaining relevant external links
• Clicks to your website from search results are free
• Long term success will require a sustained effort and a budget that will cover the effort required to achieve success.
• The success you achieve will be very much dependant on the knowledge and skill of the person doing the implementation.
• Your implementation options include:
  • An in-house approach where you invest in experienced specialists or invest in training existing staff
  • Recruit an external seo service provider

Key Characteristics of Paid

You need to be aware that:

• Time will be needed to set-up and maintain a pay per click program
• Your position on a search results page will depend on how much you are prepared to pay for a specific keyword vs your competition since the highest bidder will be awarded the top position.
• You can get any position you chose if you have the available budget to secure it
• You will need to make changes to landing pages to align with the content of your ads
• No other website changes should normally be required

Organic Search Pros and Cons

Pros

• More Visitor Traffic

If you gain a page 1 ranking position you should get more visitor traffic since 75% of visitor traffic comes from organic vs paid search results

• Better Branding

If your content is optimised for your company name or your brands these will get you good visibility and rankings

• Building Trust

Research indicates that visitors place more trust in organic search results, particularly in the early stage of a buying cycle when they are conducting broad research. This stage is critical in building the trust needed to get on the shortlist when a searcher is about to make a buying decision.

• Organic is Free

Once a ranking position is gained, the resulting visitor traffic is free. However it should be remembered that ongoing maintenance will be needed to maintain or improve visibility and ranking.

Cons:

• No Guarantee of Ranking

The investment made will not guarantee a ranking position. However an experienced seo professional should be able to conduct keyword research to identify the more promising keywords that will be likely to deliver the best results

• Time Consuming

While the end results are free, organic seo does take time and effort to produce decent results. Beware of any service provider who is willing to give a guarantee of getting a page 1 position on Google. You can use software tools (Such as the SEO Workbench) to achieve significant time savings.

Apart from the time saved, these can simplify the “Black Art “ of SEO and to turn it into a “Science” that can easily be understood and used by more and more people interested in getting better search results.

Paid Search Pros and Cons

Pros

• Immediate Results

There is no waiting time and unlike organic paid search or PPC (Pay per click) will deliver results immediately a campaign goes live

• Ideal for Seasonal Promotions

Because of its immediacy and the ability to switch on and off at will it is ideal for time sensitive or seasonal promotional campaign

• Great for Testing

It is an ideal platform for split testing new keywords to determine which works best for driving traffic and for conversions. The winning keywords can then be used for organic optimisation if desired.

• Quick Surveys

A new survey can be launched in a few hours and you can begin measuring potential buyers motives, views and opinions.

Cons

• The Bidding War

When someone bids more than your bid, your position on the search engine results will go down  unless you bid again to regain the higher position.

• Lower Visitor Potential

Because PPC only attracts 25% of the total clicks vs 75% for organic, you will theoretically have a better potential of achieving higher clicks through organic. However this depends on your keyword selection since for high competition keywords you may have little chance of reaching a high organic ranking.

Considerations In Developing A Strategy

In setting out to develop a strategy for your search marketing, you need to take the following factors into account:

Marketing Spend Comparison

Data from SEMPO indicates that PPC secures 88% of search campaign budgets vs 12% for SEO.

So Why Does PPC Account For 88% Of Search Marketing Spend?

In my view the answer is mainly because:

• PPC delivers instant results
• The Return on Investment for PPC can more easily be measured
• PPC is actively promoted by Google and Microsoft with powerful software tools to make PPC easy to use
• Many online marketing professionals come from a strong direct marketing background where the ROI for marketing spend needs to be easily and directly measurable

Click Thru Rate Comparison

75% of search result clicks go to the organic listings vs 25% to PPC.

This means that if you have a half decent chance of achieving a high organic ranking you could potentially get many more visitors from organic searches.

Consider a Combined Approach

A recent study found that:

• The combined click-through rates are 5.1% higher when paid and organic listings are present simultaneously than when only the organic listings are present
• The combined conversion rate increases 11.7% when paid and organic listings are present simultaneously than when organic listings alone are present.

So What Strategy Should You Adopt?

There is no single strategy that will suit every website

Factors that will dictate the strategy to suit you will include:

• How important is it to promote your brand?
• How popular are your keywords
• How much do you want global coverage vs country by country visibility
• How important is it to crowd out your competitors for certain keywords
• How well do your keywords rank at present

A Suggested Strategy Framework

1. For new websites quick-start your traffic with PPC
2. As you gain dominance in certain keyword niches re-evaluate PPC and if your budget will allow it continue with a combined approach
3. Invest a reasonable % of your budget in optimising for a set of keywords that are popular, not too generic and do not have too much competition
4. Invest in a Wordpress blog and develop regular quality content – this will get you indexed by the search engines for keywords used in the blog. Be sure to use the tags and categories in the blog to help the search engines in indexing your content.

Here are some more Search Engine Optimization Tips: 11 Ways To Avoid The Most Common SEO Mistakes

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