PPC versus Natural Listings - A Comparison
PPC Versus Natural Listings - The Benefits Of Organic and Paid Listings
When comparing PPC versus natural listings, one must first understand the differences between the two. By fully understanding the ins and outs of each, you can better make an informed and effective decision when using either in your advertising campaign. Although one may be better than the other depending on the status of your business, it can also be lucrative to work with both contestants in the PPC versus natural listings debate.
PPC versus Natural Listings - PPC Explained
The first contestant in the PPC versus natural listings contest is pay per click. PPC is the process of advertising your own product or service through an advertisement on another website or search engine, wherein you only pay each time a person clicks through the ad to your own site. The advertisement itself consists of certain "keywords" that are relevant to your particular industry.
When an interested buyer types in a keyword that you have selected for PPC, your ad may appear on the results page of that search. If it does, you are only required to pay if that interested buyer clicks on your ad and follows it through to your site. This side of PPC versus natural listings can be very cost-effective for many businesses, although caution must be used to make certain that this strategy is used right.
How the cost is decided is something that is settled right from the start. Fees begin at one cent per click and can range as high as fifty cents for the very popular keywords. If your keyword is in high competition, you may end up paying more every time someone clicks through. The goal is that your costs will be offset by the new business that PPC brings to your site.
PPC versus Natural Listings - Natural Listings Explained
The second contestant in the PPC versus natural listings contest involves more than its name might imply. "Natural listings" are simply the regular results that show up, unmodified, when someone types a phrase into a search engine. In order to manipulate the ranking of your own site in the natural listings, you must utilize search engine optimization (SEO) strategies to accomplish this.
SEO is best done by a professional organization that specializes in getting great results through the use of keywords on natural listings. Their tactics will involve discovering what the current "hot" keywords are for your industry or product and then developing new or integrating existing site material that seeds these keywords throughout in a normal and unobtrusive fashion.
How this works is that the keywords will be picked up upon by the search bots used by the engines (known in the industry as "spiders"). The spiders read websites like a real person would, assigning value according to topic relevance and ease of reading (spelling and grammar, for example). If the spiders detect your seeded keywords, they will award your site with a higher listing on the results page.
Considering that the majority of serious buyers only look at the first page of results for a website to read, being able to show up on that first page can be a massive benefit to your business, and can generate a major increase in site hits and overall sales. It is in this fashion that SEO has potential to help win the argument between PPC versus natural listings.
PPC versus Natural Listings - Closing Information
When considering the PPC versus natural listings argument, you must take into consideration what your own advertising goals are. Keeping your budget in mind is also important, as exceeding it will defeat the purpose of even the best-laid plans. By comparing costs and projected effectiveness of each method, you can determine which contestant in the PPC versus natural listings debate you should to side with.