Written by Guest Contributor: Steve Kinney - President & Founder, Search Optimizers

In the last SEO post, What is Search Engine Optimization?, we touched a bit on the differences between purchasing “sponsored link” space from search engines - commonly referred to as pay-per-click (PPC) marketing - and using a search-engine optimization (SEO) strategy to improve your organic rankings. Most businesses have a limited budget for their search-engine marketing efforts, so let’s look at the features, benefits, and drawbacks of PPC and SEO.

First, you should evaluate the options according to your goals, resources, and time frame.

PPC Marketing Benefits:

• Can be effective for short-term, defined campaigns with temporary keywords
• Link placement takes place almost immediately
• Clicks to your site are fully trackable with analytics
• Straightforward measurement of your campaign
• You can select search terms that fit even the smallest budget

PPC Marketing Drawbacks:

• Poor long-term strategy
• Auction system subject to rising costs as keyword popularity grows
• Can be difficult to find appropriate intersection of keyword popularity and price
• Like renting a property; if you stop bidding, you no longer have space on the front page and are invisible.

So, what is the best long-term investment strategy for search engine marketing?

That would be organic search engine optimization (SEO).

SEO Marketing Benefits:

• Often lowest cost lead generation in long run
• Organic listings are ranked based on the unbiased search engine algorithm (and not price)
• SEO is perceived by searchers to be the more credible and accurate response to the search query
• Organic results deliver a majority of the total online traffic by a wide margin
• Once the point of ROI is reached, should continue to be increasingly profitable over time
• Few businesses are doing true SEO, so those who start now can build a sizeable lead in search engine credibility.

SEO Marketing Drawbacks

• Can take months to see significant results
• Higher upfront costs
• Placement not guaranteed

The differences between SEO and PPC indicate that they can also be used effectively in tandem.  PPC’s strengths lie in short-term, defined marketing campaigns, and can yield results when carefully evaluated to be a good fit for your organization and specific campaign.

High-end SEO tends to be a good investment for most businesses that have a website.  There really isn’t a marketing substitute for consistent placement on the first pages of organic search results

In the next post in the SEO series, we’ll discuss more of the specific ins and outs of why SEO is so important to your long-term marketing strategy.

"At Search Optimizers we are very focused on organic SEO and prefer to refer best of class partners when web development, marketing strategy and social media needs are revealed to us by our customers. In our efforts to vet out high quality partners we have interviewed literally hundreds and found that Creative Marketing Services (CMS) worked at a very high level, delivering superior results and service to our clients upon referral. Our vision is to provide clients a holistic marketing solution, but organic search is only one piece of the puzzle. CMS provides a significant complement of services that, when employed with SEO, creates a powerful marketing platform to launch a business into the 21st century and beyond." - Steve Kinney

Steve Kinney is the President and founder of Search Optimizers. For 14 years Steve and his team have been performing search engine optimization (SEO), currently serving over 100 companies. Steve focuses on continually automating the process of SEO in order to increase value add to clients year over year. He is a co-instructor of the Search Engine Marketing class for the University California, Irvine Extension Department and serves on their advisory committee for the Internet Marketing Program. He is also frequent guest speaker at various other MBA programs and business conferences.