What Is The Best, Paid Search or Organic Search?

October 21, 2022

When you have got a problem or when you need some information what would you do? I’m pretty sure you will find what you want from Google or any other search engine like Bing or Yahoo. That much people have engaged with internet. In the search engine results page (SERP), you can see both organic and paid results.

You might be wonder to identify what are the paid results and what are the organic results. In this tutorial we’re going take a look at both of them. After reading fully article you will be able to choose best one. Would it be paid search or organic search?

The first few results in the SERP are paid search results. Those websites have paid for get a position in the SERP. They will appear according to the your search queries. You can see some paid search results at the bottom of the page too.

Google is not the only platform that publish paid ads. Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn do the same. Other results are coming from organic search and websites won’t pay for make them appear.

Google identify them content and it decide them place in SERP according to them quality. If you are interesting in digital marketing this will this guide will help you to understand what is paid search and organic search and difference between them.

Organic Search

Search engine algorithms analyze all the pages in Internet and they show what matches the best with user intent in the search engine results pages. We called them as organic results. Google always try to give users exactly what they are looking for.

If your content have the same keywords that user search and if your have a good SEO score, you’ll be able to get better ranking. When Google giving quality score it look at page’s title tags, meta description, URL, keywords, page content. If your page has best SEO, it’s easy to rank higher. But this is a long term process and it takes few months to climb up in ranking.

Paid Search

Marketers pay SEM (search engine marketing) for their ads to appear in the SERP. These results are called paid results. Usually the first few results in the SERP are come from paid search. You can identify by just looking at the. Because they have got a small outlined ‘Ad’ label on the left side of the URL.

If your ad keywords are the same with user search queries, then your paid ads will be shown. But the ad which takes higher place is the ad which has highest bid. But if you haven’t had a highest bid and if you had make a quality content, still there is a chance to climb up in rankings.

Which Strategy is Best for my Business, paid search or organic search?

Digital marketing is really competitive because many businesses have start to improve their business with it. Therefore having both paid search and organic search will give you more results. Organic search results have an evergreen presence. They will climb up the rankings without having effects from time.

But paid search Is really different. Your ads will appear in the SERP until you pay for them. Which means if you stop paying, the ad will stop displaying. It’s important to choose the right marketing strategy to your business. We are going to discuss about main pros and cons of those strategies. They will make easier you to choose what suits to you.

Before using any of these strategies, you need to make sure to select best platform from your marketing process. For example, if you’re running an clothing shop, it’s better to start your online marketing through social media platform like Instagram. Because there are many people who might interest in clothing brand. But using social media might not make sense for other type businesses. Firstly understand how and where your customers are looking for solutions online and select a right platform. Now you can start your marketing campaign.

Organic search pros

Getting higher rank in SERPs means you are a trusted source of information. You have got that position after beating many businesses who are looking for that spot.

1. Authority and credibility

If you follow SEO best practices, you can earn authority and rank higher on search engines. The reason is Google and other search engines think your a reliable source of information for certain keywords because you have follow SEO practices. Then you will be pushed higher in the SERP that contains those keywords. If you follow more SEO practices, you will get more authority and climb up rankings. If you climb up rankings, you will earn more authority.

Usually people trust organic results than paid ads. Because they know paid ads get their position by spending money. Therefore many people use organic results to find what they want. About 65% percent of desktop users using organic results. If you optimize your page according to SEO practices both Google and searchers will understand your page is worthy to click on.

2. Cost

You don’t have to spend money of optimize your content in organic search. Knowledge about SEO is enough to make quality content with good focus keyphrase. Making quality content means, getting higher rank in SERPs. Organic Search gives you long term results unlike paid search.

3. Top of funnel clicks

Click through rates are higher for websites that appear at the top of SERPs. It’s true specially for funnel searches. Funnel searches means people searching something on the internet without the intention of buying them. They are doing kind a research about where to make a purchase. SEO helps you to catch that audience. If your content is quality, you can term them to buy from yours.

Organic search keeps on giving results. If you optimize your site with SEO best practices, you will start to getting rank. And it will continue without effect from time until Google thinking your content is worthy. Once you climb the top of the SERPs, it can stay there long time. You might have experienced this as a searcher. When you searching something on Google, you might see pages published in many years ago. The reason is Google still thinks they are valuable resource for you.

Organic search cons

1. Time and resources

Do you believe that anything in this world is free. Of cause not. You have to pay for them. It might not be money. But it can be time also. In organic search, you’ll have to spend long time and resources to get better SEO. And also it takes few months to start getting ranking.

To get a rank you have to fight with other companies who have same keywords as yours. Because in this game, you re not the only competitor. You need to spend more time to making a quality content. It’s your business and if you wanna get customers, you’ll have to pay for it with time.

Paid Search Pros

What could be better than getting your message quickly and efficiently to people who are actively searching for what you offer. Using paid search gives you many benefits. It’s fast, easy, and highly targeted. To get those benefits you will have to pay for them. It’s really expensive and short lived too. Knowing those cons and pros will help you to choose best marketing strategy.

1.Faster and Easier

If you are going to use organic search, it take some time to develop evergreen SEO content and make it climb up the Google rankings. If have not that much time, you can use paid search. Because it is the fastest online marketing strategy. All you need to do is follow AdWords practices, develop a great landing page, optimize your content and having a enough budget. Then paid search will get you in front of new audiences who are actively looking for related keywords of yours much quicker.

Making a PPC campaign is easier than making a organic search campaign. Paid search also need fewer resources. Having a team of writers to develop SEO-friendly content and having expertise to manage campaigns to avoid misusing budget for unqualified traffic are enough. Paid search is the much easier and more accessible strategy for all businesses.

2.Targeted

Audience targeting is important role in every digital marketing platforms. You will be able to reach people that are more likely to click on your ad through targeting. Platforms like Google, Facebook, Instagram, Bing and others have targeting methods. They help to specify exactly who you want to see ads. For example, in Facebook you can target people by their age, educational level, location and martial status and many more.

3.High purchase intent

You can put your business in front of the people who are actually looking for make a purchase through paid search. Through doing keyword research, you can refine your campaigns.

Paid search cons

1.Cost and longevity

In paid search, if you wanna play then you have to pay. You need to bid on keywords and the amount you are going to pay depends on the competition. It’ll be an kind a investment for your business. If you get more from consumers than how much you spend on bidding, your competition is successful.

For example If you spend 2K on a paid search campaign and end up making 10K, wouldn’t it worthy investment? For paid search, you need to have enough budget. If you stopped paying, your campaign won’t run anymore. Which means your ads wouldn’t appear in SERPs.

Final thoughts

Both paid and organic search strategies have pros and cons. To capture more leads for your business, you need to target customers at both the top and the bottom of the funnel. If you can use both strategies, they will give you more results.

A strong paid search campaign make sure to put your business in front of the people who ready to make a purchase. Organic search campaign with make sure your page find in the organic results in SERPs. These strategies combination make it easy for customers to find you online.

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