Organic Engines or Paid?
One question I often get is which way should I go - aim for the free or organic search engines or purchase a PPC (pay-per-click) ad in Google’s Adwords, Micorosft Live, or the Yahoo Search Engine Marketing?
The answer is generally yes; that is, go for both. The organic engines are free, but in Google it often takes 6-8 months to position a new site with any level of credibility. The advantage, however, is that’s free (except for your time for the optimization). As a result, your ROI (return-on-investment) is infinite. Traffic can vary with time, sometimes dramatically.
The PPC engines cost you something, but you are immediately on the Internet. There are other advantages as well. PPC engines such as Google’s Adwords or the Microsoft Live, are excellent places to test your site with various keyword phrases. With Microsoft Live, the cost is low but the traffic will also be low. Google’s Adwords will cost more, but as your traffic goes up the cost goes down and traffic starts at a higher level. In addition, the paid advertising includes multiple tools for measuring how your site is working. Finally, your paid ad is a trusted site to the search engines. A human being has looked at it.
Expect that with either route your traffic will gnerally be higher with the organic engines. Searchers put more trust in the free ads. One top ad I often see in the Yahoo PPC (which drives the CNN advertising) is from a company with very poor ethics and morals. As a result, the Yahoo PPC is really shouting at me that you can’t trust their PPC advertisements. This is less likely in Google, as the PPC cost goes down as the traffic goes up. A corrupt company will not get much traffic. This is not true in Yahoo, where it you have enough money you can buy the position you want.
Why not try both organic and paid? You might even keep two sites - one optimized for the free engines, another for your Adwords campaigns. Remember, unlike with classified ads in a magazine or newspaper, you pay nothing until they click through to your site. You pay for the click-throughs, not the impressions (ad listing).