Before we dive into the comparison and discuss the pros and cons of paid and organic search, let’s first understand the basic differences of both. When people reach out to any website by finding your links from engine search results it is usually known as organic traffic. Contrary to it, we pay the top results on the search engines even above the organic links search accounts. Companies pay for those links to appear on spot one.
You have a question, the first thing you will do is to type your query on Google, right? 81% of us have the same practice unless someone prefers Bing or Yahoo. Google, too, offers two different methods to bring traffic to the websites—Paid & Organic. Paid marketing is better known as Search Engine Marketing (SEM) while the organic source is Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
Organic Search Results or SEO:
I consider this organic search or search engine optimization a highly valuable traffic source for various reasons. Back in the days ranking in top results was not a big deal, when writing a few articles was enough to bring the results in top search results, which is why SEO was simple. There was no competition only a handful of people were present online, unlike now.
Why Organic Optimization?
– Google is the primary source for researching anything, and it directs the maximum organic traffic to the website.
– Google is notably picky with ranking the website in the first five results based on keywords or content. Regardless, the key ingredient is to have high-quality content.
– Moving up to top results in engine search organically takes time, however, patience and a good amount of effort are prerequisites if you are targeting for top 10 or top 5. Once you reach your aimed destination, the results will be worth all the wait.
– On Google, as per the facts, the first top 10 results in the search results get 92% attention from the total search traffic.
– Over 95% of the traffic drops when they have to go to the second page of search results.
– 33% of the clicks from the total organic search results come on the first listing of Google.
– Around 57% of B2B (business-to-business) marketers suggest SEO brings a favorable influence on lead generation.
– Comparatively, the organic search leads get 14.6 close rates on average, as compared to 1.7% through outbound marketing leads.
– According to behavior research, the highest online spenders are more inclined towards organic information from search results as compared to the paid ones.
– As per the reports, on average, there are above 10.8 billion Google searches done monthly.
– 78% of the people from the US research for products and services online before placing an order or going out for getting that finally.
Google not only influences users’ opinion but the buying behavior and overall lives too. Since online searching and researching online is a deeply rooted habit now, organic traffic is very unlikely to slow down in the coming years.
Paid Search Results:
Paid search is digital marketing where search engines such as Google show ads on google to get an account on any search engine to appear on top of all the results; including the ones that made their spots organically. They do this predominantly because reaching the top ten search results requires a good amount of effort and had too much competition in order to make a mark, therefore, digital marketers or business owners chose the instant way to get quick results, i.e. paid marketing.
SEO, as discussed above, demands patience so it can grow on its own; paid marketing comes off way to easier in order to reach the top results in a shorter time span and increase organic traffic.
Just to get an idea of how much money has been spent on paid marketing, we will take Google’s AdWords program example. Google is the most commonly used search engine for paid marketing, popularly known as pay-per-click (PPC) advertising available online. Amongst hundreds of other high revenue-generating brands such as YouTube and Android, AdWords accounts are managing to produce 70% of their profit, which is enough to justify its efficiency.
While starting your very first campaign on Google AdWords, you must remain careful and smart. Gradually, if things start well, you will start tons of targeted website traffic to your landing pages way too speedier than organic marketing can ever bring in.
The bottom line is:
Conventionally, inbound marketers do not prefer a paid search because they view it more than an outbound technique for marketing. Nevertheless, with the emergence of Social Media Marketing and online tools like Hub Spot Ads, it’s getting way too popular for both to work in an organized manner.
Realistically, if you go for SEO or the Organic method, you will start seeing some progress in search rankings after almost three to six months, and the majority of us do not have the patience to wait for results. Whereas paid search helps your website get the right visitors at the moment and speeds up the lengthy course of optimizing your landing pages for higher conversion rates, eventually paying off enormously in the longer run.
Therefore, if you compare the pros and cons of organic search with the paid search, do a brainstorm session meeting with your teammates, compare your deadline tentative, timeline, and budget of the project. If you are looking for instant results, paid search is recommended. If you’re looking for the most economical and cost-saving results, the answer is to develop organic search results. Maybe you need a combination of both. The consensus says that the organic search is the most cost-effective digital marketing method for the long run.