Apples and Oranges

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Aside from the obvious differences (one is organic and one is paid), Search Engine Optimization and Pay-Per-Click have one very important and often times overlooked difference. With Pay-Per-Click, you control the landing pages visitors will see. With Search Engine Optimization, spiders control the landing pages.

As a marketer, you will want to provide the most relevant landing pages for your visitors so they don't hit the back button immediately after arriving at your website. Pay-Per-Click seems like it would work well with customer turnout for specific products or services, sales, discounts, special offers, etc. that would require strategic landing pages.Search Engine Optimization seems more effective for visitors looking for a wider range of information on a website rather than specific pages within the website.

Depending on what your conversion goals are and your immediate vs. long term needs, Pay-Per-Click may be the better fit for your business than Search Engine Optimization, and vice versa. What's the trade off then? Amazon.com would do better promoting Pay-per-click ads of specific web pages that match a search query for "Cajun Cookbooks". But they would also perform just as well at ranking high in organic search queries for "order books online".

Most small- to mid-size businesses however do not have the mammoth budget that Amazon.com has and will sometimes need to choose between apples and oranges.

Post by: Nancy Chu