Organic Search vs. Paid Search

Please share with the SalesPractice community which method of lead generation you prefer organic search or paid search.

Feed a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Paid search is good for as long as your budget holds out. Organic search is free. Take the money you would have paid for Paid search and invest it in SEO so that you get top placement in Organic search.

Our own testing and metrics indicate the following:

1. The best buyers and most sales conversions come
from PPC.

2. The most lookers and readers, and time spent on our sites
come from Organic searchers. They are lower conversions.

3. The average prospect/customer doesn't know the difference
between a PPC ad and Organic Result.

4. People want immediate, engaging relevancy to their
search when they hit your page.

5. One way of accomplishing #4 is to code the page to
call in the PPC term (need to be carefuly doing this so
it doesn't give a poor display experience to visitor).

You're results certainly may be different.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mikey

Feed a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Paid search is good for as long as your budget holds out. Organic search is free. Take the money you would have paid for Paid search and invest it in SEO so that you get top placement in Organic search.

Agreed. PPC is instant gratification. 80% of people click on a top 5 link in the organic area of Google. Many do not trust the PPC links, since they are listed as ads.

It is not a bad idea to bid on some PPC keywords though if you want to implement a powerful marketing strategy. That strategy involves getting your business in the top 10 of Google more then once, then using PPC on TOP of that for maximum exposure. This is something my company is excellent at.

Which one is better is dependent upon what your site is like. There isn't a black and white answer for this

Quote:

Originally Posted by JulieR

Which one is better is dependent upon what your site is like. There isn't a black and white answer for this

I see what you are saying. If a site is done in Flash, you have no other choice right now then PPC. This is why doing a site in Flash is a bad idea unless you are already an established brand. Regardless of reports, Google does not index flash nearly as well as text and HTML tags.

When you stop paying for Clicks, your website marketing presence goes back to 0. That is the main issue. It is far less cost effective then Organic.

Organic search results stay relevant much longer and can be done for free. Plus you get more traffic through a high organic ranking.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mikey

Feed a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Paid search is good for as long as your budget holds out.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mikey

Take the money you would have paid for Paid search and invest it in SEO so that you get top placement in Organic search.

Very important considerations in my opinion. Excellent insight Mikey.

They're different. You can't really ask which is better. What you can ask is which one fills your needs at the time.

Organic Search vs. Paid Search

Pay Per Click - PPC Forum