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 Search engines are one of the primary ways that Internet users find web sites. That's why a web site with good search engine listings may lead to a dramatic increase in traffic. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay per click (PPC) are two of the most popular ways to draw that traffic to your website.
Pay per click advertising (PPC) is a search engine marketing technique that requires you to pay a fee every time someone clicks to your website from an ad you've placed in a search engine's results. Simply stated, you will "bid" a price per click to be in a specific position of the search rankings for a particular search keyword or keyword phrase. The more you agree to pay per click (or bid) for a specific keyword, the higher your site will rank in the paid search results. The paid search results are usually marked as advertisements or “Sponsored Links” and appear above or beside the search engine’s organic listings. The #1 position on a search phrase requires a bid higer per click cost, whereas the lower positions require only a bid of a few cents. Your available budget and willingness to bid will dramatically impact your website's search engine ranking position when the search engine displays search keyword or keyword phrase results. Although your website name or URL will be displayed in the search results at your bid for position, you are not charged the pay-per-click "bid" until a searcher actually clicks on your website URL.
As a short term strategy, pay per click marketing offers one tremendous advantage. It enables you to achieve a top or high ranking position almost instantaneously. If you want to draw traffic to your website fast for any reason, pay-per-click marketing can make that happen! The primary benefit of pay per click is the immediate results and complete control it offers the advertiser. You may target one set of keywords today, and if they don’t work out you may target an entirely different set of keywords tomorrow. What position you strive for and what you are willing to bid to achieve the position is totally under your control! However Pay per click can get very exspensive. A top position for some search terms can cost thousands or tens of thousands of dollars each day. Over the long term, organic search engine optimization (SEO) is much more cost effective.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of increasing the amount of visitors to a Web site by ranking high in the organic search results of a search engine. Organic search engine optimization is done by optimizing the web pages of your site itself and by creating link popularity which drives your website to the top for the chosen search terms. Optimizing is an ongoing practice which can be difficult and confusing. Experience has shown that search engine traffic can make (or break) an organization's success. The higher a Web site ranks in the results of a search, the greater the chance that that site will be visited by a user. SEO helps to ensure that a site is accessible to a search engine and improves the chances that the site will be found by the search engine. Targeted visitors to a website can provide publicity, revenue, and exposure like no other. Investing in SEO, whether through time or finances, can have an exceptional rate of return.
One of the drawbacks of organic search engine placement is the time required to get your website to the top. Search engines do not update their indices daily or even weekly, it can take six months or more to see the full effects of a professional optimization job. A myth exists that organic search engine optimization is cheap. It isn’t. If you are targeting a search term along the lines of “web hosting”, you’ll be looking at a minimum of five figures per year. | |
