you bid on the keywords you believe prospects would type in the search bar when looking for your products or services. For example, if you sell vintage wines, you would bid on the keyword “vintage wine”, hoping a user would type those words in the search engine, see your ad, click it and buy. These ads are called sponsored links or sponsored ads and typically appear next to the natural (also known as “organic”) results on a search page. You pay for your ad only when the user clicks on it. Google AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing (formerly Overture) are currently the largest PPC providers. Our job is to help you choose PPC keywords, craft and place ads that extend your marketing reach cost-effectively.
Internet Marketing includes SEO and additional online marketing tools you can use to gain the attention of potential customers and the search engines. Each of the marketing techniques listed below work to drive motivated traffic to your website and allow you to compete more effectively.
PPC has a better conversion rate. It's true that PPC converts slightly higher than SEO in a keyword-to-keyword comparison. But 88% of the traffic comes from SEO and 12% from PPC.
• PPC is easier to customize. Search engines have more controls on what can and can't be included in a paid search ad. Best practices aside, an SEO can make a title tag say whatever they want.
• PPC is easier. PPC is easier to set up in the short-term. But it's just as easy for your competitors, eliminating the competitive advantage.
So SEO offers more traffic, fewer limitations and higher barriers to entry. But PPC does have some legitimate advantages:
• PPC can be updated immediately. With PPC, a marketer can quickly change a campaign's keywords and where they point, often within minutes. Changing SEO keywords, which are woven into titles and copy and anchor text, among other places, takes much longer. Never mind that search engine spiders then have to crawl the updated site.
• PPC will hold its place on SERPs. With the incorporation of real-time search, natural search results get pushed down the SERP. Real-time results are positioned front and center. But paid search ads make search engines too much money to be displaced.