Difference between SEO and PPC
You may have heard at some point in the past SEOs or digital marketing companies talking about Google AdWords and/or (organic) Google listings.
There are many things you may wish to consider when deciding on an SEO (search engine optimisation) campaign to improve your organic listings or an AdWords campaign to increase online exposure quickly (for a price). We hear talk about it regularly, but what exactly are organic listings and AdWords, and how can they help you and your business? The following is a brief overview of what the differences are between the two which is ideal for small business owners new to the world of AdWords and SEO.
What is Google AdWords?
Google AdWords is Google’s advertising service which allows users to run PPC (pay per click) campaigns to list specific advertisements on search pages for set keywords. As a user running a campaign, you can specify a set number of keywords and a budget that you are comfortable with. Although there is some variation to where and how Google Ads will appear, typically you can expect them to show in search results and look like this. This advertisement came up when we performed a search on the term ‘trains UK’.
Why use Google Ads?
The point is to get instant listings on the first page of Google in the form of a link and a brief description. Although you will need to pay, it will give you instant exposure which can be extremely beneficial if you are a new business that hasn’t had chance to build your sites reputability yet which helps increase your organic listings.
Using Google’s Keyword Planner tool, you can get an idea on how competitive your chosen terms are and get an idea on how much it will cost for you to run certain campaigns. With AdWords, as the name (Pay Per Click) suggests, you only pay when someone clicks through to your website. You can go one step further with your campaign and create specific landing pages that visitors see once they click on your Ad. This can be very useful when advertising specific products or services with set keywords.
SEO and Google’s organic listings
Organic listings in Google can be thought of as ‘natural’ listings. Although there are many determining factors that come into play when Google decide which websites to list on the front page, Google generate their listings based on how relevant, reputable and reliable the websites are.
As we mention the SEO services section of our website, more than 85% of people use search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo to find the products, services and information they need. And the large majority of these users are looking for organic listings.
Organic listings can be found in the main area of the search results page. Below shows organic listings for the search term ‘train times’. They display directly beneath the Ads.
Organic listings are often seen as more trustworthy listings that are more likely to be relevant to your search as Google’s algorithm has vetted these links and show the attributes of a relevant and trustworthy site – that’s the idea anyway. This is why Google release regular updates to ensure these display fairly, and users searching find the most relevant content on their first page.
How can I improve my position in organic search?
There are many factors involved when it comes to how Google orders it’s search listings. Google release tips on how to help increase your websites visibility in search, but no exact details are given because of the potential for companies to abuse this resulting in spam and irrelevant search results. A good source of information is Google’s Webmasters channel on YouTube: www.youtube.com/user/GoogleWebmasterHelp?.
One simple tip to stick to for those of you new to SEO is to make sure your content is regularly updated and indexed so that search engines can read the site’s content and come back regularly for more. There are many advanced tips that we will cover at a later date, but as this post is an introduction for beginners, a starting point would be to focus on building relationships with other companies and gaining good quality relevant links from them to your website which is another essential tip. Make sure that your website content contains some of the most accurate words that describe your business, particularly in the headings and title of the website. Make sure that the content on your website containing text is actually written in text. A lot of the time website owners put text within Flash or other media which stops Google from reading this content therefor not being able to list you in the search results for it.
You can consider an SEO or search marketing company to look after all aspects of your SEO campaign, taking the worry away and allowing you to do what you do best run your business.
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