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Paid vs. Organic Optimization: which one is better?

Marketing

Updated on Jul 27, 2019

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Before we dive into the comparison and discuss the pros and cons of paid and organic optimization, let’s first understand the basic differences of both. When people reach out to any website by finding the links from search engine results it is usually known as organic traffic. Contrary to it, the top search engine results, listed even above the organic links, are paid search accounts. Companies pay for those links to appear on spot one.
You have a question - the first thing you will do is to type your query on Google - right? 81% of us have the same practice unless someone prefers Bing or Yahoo. And Google, too, offers two different methods to bring traffic on the websites – Paid & Organic. Paid marketing is better known as Search Engine Marketing (SEM) while the organic method is termed as Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
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Organic Search Results:


The organic search or organic reach method is considered a highly valuable traffic source for various reasons. Back in the days ranking in top results was not a big deal. Writing a few articles was enough to ensure a spot in the top search results - the reason why SEO was simple. Mainly because there was no competition as such, only a handful of people were present online. But today it is not the least like that.

Why Organic Optimization?


- Nowadays Google is the primary source for researching anything and it directs the most traffic to the website.
- And Google is notably picky when it comes to ranking the website in the first five results based on a keyword or the content. Hence the key ingredient remains high-quality content.
- Moving up to top results in search engines organically takes time. Patience and persistent effort are the prerequisites if you are targeting for top 10 or top 5. But once you reach your aimed destination, the results will be worth all the wait.
- On Google, as per the facts, the first top 10 results in the search results get 92% attention of the total search traffic.
- More than 95% of the traffic drops when they have to go to the second page of search results.
- 33% of the clicks from the total organic search results come on the first listing of Google.
- Around 57% of B2B (business-to-business) marketers suggest that SEO has a favorable influence on lead generation.
- Comparatively, organic leads get 14.6% close rates on average as compared to 1.7% through outbound marketing leads.
- According to behavior research, the highest online spenders are more inclined towards organic information from search results as compared to the paid ones.
- As per the reports, on an average there are above 10.8 billion Google searches done monthly.
- 78% of the people from the US research for products and services online before placing an order or going out to finally get that.
Google not only influences our opinion but our buying behavior and overall lives too. Since the habit of online searching and researching via search engines is deeply rooted in all of us now, organic traffic is very unlikely to slow down in the coming years.

Paid Search Results:


This is when companies pay to get an account on any search engine to appear on top of all the results; including the ones that have made their mark organically. They do this predominantly because reaching the top ten search results requires a good amount of effort given the extent of competition they face. In order to make a mark, therefore, digital marketers and business owners chose the instant way to get quick results i.e. paid marketing.
SEO, as discussed above in detail, demands patience so it can grow on its own; paid marketing comes off way more easily if the aim is to secure the top results in a shorter time span.
Just to have an idea of how much money has been spent on paid marketing, we will take the example of Google’s AdWords program. Google is the most commonly used search engine for paid marketing and makes what is popularly known as pay-per-click (PPC) advertising available online. Amongst hundreds of other high revenue generating brands such as YouTube and Android, AdWords accounts manage to produce 70% of the profit which is enough to justify the efficiency of the program.
While starting your very first campaign on Google AdWords you must, however, be smart and remain careful. Gradually, if things start well, you will be able to receive tons of targeted traffic to your landing pages way too quickly than organic marketing could ever bring in.

The bottom-line is:


Conventionally, inbound marketers do not prefer a paid search for the reason they view it more as an outbound technique for marketing. Nevertheless, with the emergence of Social Media Ads and online tools like Hub Spot Ads, it's getting way too popular for both of these to work in an organized manner.
Realistically speaking, if you go for SEO or the Organic method, you will start seeing some progress in search rankings after almost three to six months but the majority of us do not have the patience to wait for results. Whereas, paid search helps your website get the right visitors at that moment and speeds up the lengthy course of optimizing your landing pages for higher conversion rates, paying off enormously in the longer run.
Therefore, if you compare the pros and cons of organic search with paid search, hold a brainstorming session with your teammates, discuss the projected timeline and the budget for the endeavor and compare your tentative deadlines. If you are looking for instant results, paid search is recommended. On the other hand, if you're looking for the most economical and cost saving results, the answer is to develop organic search results. Maybe, you would need a combination of both. The general consensus nonetheless is that organic search remains the most cost-effective digital marketing methodology in the long run.
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