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Google Adwords, Paid Search, Pay per click, PPC, SEO, Search Engine Optimization, Bing, Yahoo. With so many terms floating around, it’s understandable for some people to be confused and not be able to distinguish between different methods of online marketing.
However, it’s very important to see that there is a distinct difference in paid search, also known as PPC or Pay-Per-Click, versus Search Engine Optimization, also know as SEO.
Paid Search
Paid Search, a method of paying for your online advertisement or for your website listing to be visible in search engines, is a valid and very popular method of internet marketing. Google Adwords, the system that spearheaded the popularity of paid search, employs the standard method of paid advertising, known as pay-per-click (PPC). Literally, advertisers pay Google for every click an advertisement or paid listing receives. Due to the ease and success of this platform, other search engines, such as Yahoo! and Bing, have taken the same PPC system for their own advertisements.
PPC is organized as an auction-style system that has advertisers bidding for certain ‘key phrases’ they want to come up for in the search engines. For example, if someone wants to appear as a paid listing when a person searches for “business pens”, they would ‘bid’ on the cost of each click received for that term. The average cost-per-click (CPC) for “business pens” is $23.61. Due to several competitive and quality factors, an advertiser may pay a bit less or a bit more than that average. Since PPC is only focused on clicks, you may receive many clicks with no sales. As you can see, PPC can get very expensive if you get several clicks. In addition, since you’re paying for every click, once you stop paying, your listing is no longer visible.
Paid search works well for businesses that either have a big budget to compete against bigger companies, or are in niche markets where their respective ‘key phrases’ may be cheaper. For example, “Parker Pens” (a brand of pens) have an average CPC of $1.57. It’s a great ‘instant’ and ‘short-term’ method of getting targeted (and possibly expensive) traffic.
For many other businesses with a more conservative monthly budget, search engine optimization is a more viable and longterm option.
Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization, also know as SEO, is a method of having your business listed in Google, Yahoo or Bing without paying for every click. An important point to make with SEO is that you don’t, and CAN’T pay Google for SEO.
You can’t pay Google for SEO. Any company promoting SEO by you paying Google is referring to PPC, not SEO.
The main point with SEO is that you list in search engines ‘organically’. Search Engines use their extensive databases to find the most relevant websites based on what a visitor searched. Consider it a free encyclopedia to the internet. In order to be included in Google, you do not have to pay. You are ‘organically’ appearing in Google because Google feels you are a relevant website.
The purpose of SEO is to tell Google that your site is relevant to certain topics or keywords. For the most part, when you pay for SEO, you’re paying a company to perform external changes and actions in order to send that message across to Google.
While the cost may range from low to very expensive, the end result from a proper SEO campaign is your website being listed on the top of Google within the ‘organic results’ pictured above. Unlike PPC, once you’re up in the top of the search engines, you will remain up there by paying a flat maintenance fee to your SEO company. You DO NOT have to pay PER-CLICK. Therefore, you can see that a well-ranked SEO’d website can gain similar exposure to someone paying for PPC, however the cost is likely to be a lot lower (if you consider keywords such as ‘business pens’ at $23/click).
SEO is suitable for companies of all sizes looking to get exposure on the web. However, SEO is not an overnight procedure. It can take anywhere from 6-18 months to begin seeing viable results in Google. However, for many, the results after those few months is well worth it over paid search.
