WHICH HAS BETTER RESULTS - SEO OR PPC?

"According to Jupiter Research (a Forrester Research company), 81% of users find their desired destination through a search engine. This research makes it clear that it's very important for your brand to have a strong presence in the search engines, ensuring that you're in front of your target audience.

However, there's still a big decision to make - whether to use SEO (Search Engine Optimization) or PPC (Pay-per-clicks) to get in front of your target. Done correctly, both can get you on the front page of search engines, however, each has its respective benefits and costs.

SEOmoz, a great SEO resource, recently published an article by the team at Enquisite quantifying the effectiveness of SEO vs. PPC. The article details that organic results (SEO) are 8.5x more likely to be clicked on than paid search results. That's a large disparity and is likely attributed to searchers gradually learning the difference between organic and sponsored results, and recognizing that organic results are typically the more respected resource.

However, PPC hold a slight edge in conversion rates, as paid search results are 1.5x more likely to convert click thrus from the search engine. The SEOmoz article attributes, to the fact that the paid search result's "text and landing page is custom optimized by the advertiser."

So, looking at both of these numbers, it can be concluded that "the opportunity from organic search is 5.66x that of paid search." Given the flat out choice of ranking high organically or having great PPC ads - the overwhelmingly logical choice is organic. However, we all know it's not easy or else those "Rank #1 in Google TOMORROW" ads would be much more effective. True SEO takes time, not get rich quick schemes.

SEMPO, the Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization, estimates that 87% of search engine dollars are spent on PPC vs. 11% spent on SEO efforts. That's more than $10 billion spent on PPC vs. just $1 billion spent on SEO. That means for the strategy that's over 5x more effective, SEO is only receiving 1/8 the media spent in the market!

When it comes to the long term lifeline of your internet marketing, the result is clear- SEO offers the better value in search marketing. You won't rank #1 overnight and it takes months of consistent SEO marketing, but SEO is more affordable and the longterm benefits have been proven."

Exerpts from an article written by Clay Schossow. Clay Schossow leads New Media Campaigns' project management and business development efforts. A graduate of UNC Chapel Hill, he has guided more than 200 websites from concept to launch. He is a frequent writer on Internet marketing and online campaigning.

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