Paid Search vs Organic Search: Using Both to Your Advantage

Our clients often ask us about whether they should be focused on organic or paid search results. Our answer is generally that you should be thinking about both! Strengthening your SEO in order to come up at the top of organic search results is important, and paid search results often also generate many good leads.

One interesting thing that many consumers don’t understand about organic search results vs. paid results is that, at the end of the day, they are both often paid for by a company–just in different ways. Organic search results come from fitting into the Google algorithm of what is most relevant to the search term, while paid results are a more traditional advertisement bought by the company to ensure showing up at the top of the page. While consumers often trust organic search results more than paid search results, the truth is that showing up at the top of the page for organic search results can sometimes cost even more money–because it costs time and money to strategically use SEO–than paid advertisements.

Using Paid Search and Organic Search in Your Online Marketing Efforts

As a business owner, you should strategically use both organic and paid search results to your advantage. Here are a few things you should know about organic search vs paid search:

• If you have the right people setting up your Google account, you can tell whether leads are coming through organic search or paid search. If you are getting a lot of organic leads, it usually means that you have your SEO up and running well.
• There isn’t any magic percentage, but we believe that having leads coming in both ways is good. It means that you are running a well-rounded online marketing campaign.
• If you are getting lots of organic search leads, you may feel that you don’t have to spend money to get paid leads. This really comes down to your competition and your industry. If your competitors are out there spending money, you may need to do the same to keep up. If you are “beating” your competition organically, you can focus on SEO as a standalone effort.

If you have any additional questions on organic search vs. paid search, we are always happy to talk. You can reach Niki at [email protected].