Every business owner who reaches the point where they need to start thinking about digital advertising and marketing for the business begins to get acquainted for the first time with various terms, different advertising techniques, and the most popular platforms for advertising a business online. One of the most common questions regarding this is: where is it best to put the money intended for online business advertising? Should you invest it in organic SEO? In paid promotion? Or perhaps in another advertising technique? Well, in this article we will review the two most popular options, which usually form the basis for online branding and advertising for any business investing in digital marketing: organic SEO or paid advertising on Google. Where should you invest the money? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each? And who can you consult to make the right choice?
What will you learn in this article?
- What is organic promotion (or SEO if you will)? What are its pros and cons? Should you invest in organic promotion? How soon can you expect results? And more.
- What is paid promotion or paid advertising on Google? What are its pros and cons compared to organic promotion and in general?
- What should you choose for your business and budget? For your needs? And more.
Starting from the basics – What is organic SEO?
Organic search engine optimization, or organic SEO for short, is essentially an advertising technique through which the site owner or an SEO specialist on their behalf performs various actions to “encourage” Google to rank the promoted website higher in organic search results. Google’s search results page is divided into organic results and sponsored advertisements. Most users prefer organic results and consider them more reliable and better than an advertisement that might appear in the top results not necessarily because its content is good or accurate to what the user is searching for, but simply because the website owner pays more to appear there.
Organic SEO includes a wide variety of actions required to promote the website in Google search results. This can be likened to an endless horse race or track-and-field competition. Thus, even when you reach the top result on Google for a certain keyword, you will need to invest in the website’s organic promotion over time, including for that keyword, in order to maintain first place and gain the user traffic it can bring to you (and potential clients, in fact). A professional SEO company performs dozens of actions to promote a website on Google, and this requires time, patience, and good, professional work. We do not want to complicate things for you with too many technical terms or jargon from the field, and will simply note that it is the leading advertising technique today, although it requires patience, usually more than other advertising techniques.
The advantages of organic SEO:
- Extensive and virtually unlimited exposure to clicks on your website’s pages in search results. You do not have to pay for each click.
- The website becomes a significant asset that increases the value of your business. It can also generate significantly more revenue for you over time.
- In most cases, it brings higher-quality visitor traffic than paid advertising techniques.
- Contributes to the branding and reputation of the business.
The disadvantages of organic SEO:
- Requires a relatively long time to achieve results.
- Results do not depend solely on the website owner or the SEO specialist. Google may suddenly roll out a change that could cause a drop in rankings, although Google usually gives sufficient advance notice in the case of a major update.
- Google displays organic results lower than sponsored results because that is how it makes more money.
- Not everyone can perform organic SEO on Google (meaning – anyone can try, but not necessarily professionally, and often Google may penalize the site instead of ranking it). Therefore, it is important to enlist the help of a professional and experienced SEO specialist to promote your website.
What is paid search / sponsored promotion?
Paid promotion, or sponsored advertising, refers to advertising through Google’s advertising system. This system is now called Google Ads (formerly known as Google AdWords) and is essentially Google’s in-house system for quick advertising of businesses in search results as well as across additional Google partner sites on the web. If we look only at search engine results – we mentioned earlier that Google’s results page consists of sponsored results and organic results. Usually, the top 2-3 results will be sponsored (a small badge, usually green, containing the word “Ad” will appear on the result), and that is how you identify that these results are from paid advertising and not organic. Google will always display several results (sometimes more than 3, but usually no more than 4) because this is their primary way of making money from the search engine.
It works like this: a business owner signs up for Google Ads -> creates a new campaign -> writes ads to be displayed in the results, and sets a budget and payment method in the system. On paper – the more they pay within the price range scale for the keywords around which they manage the campaign – the higher they will rank. However – by achieving a high relevance score for the ads, you can encourage Google to lower the cost-per-click while still maintaining a high position in the results, even higher than someone else bidding more whose ad is not relevant. Managing an advertising campaign requires a professional hand, and one must also know how to avoid or reduce the risk of competitor clicks attempting to harm your campaign and deplete your advertising budget.
The advantages of paid advertising on Google:
- A very fast process – within a few hours, the first clients may knock on your website’s doors, leave their details, or call the business.
- Ability to target advertising according to various parameters and create a focused, effective campaign.
- After the initial investment in the website, there is no need for continuous maintenance strictly for advertising purposes.
- Visitors can also be directed to a landing page and not necessarily to a full website.
- A great way to conduct market research or launch a product/event in a short timeframe.
The disadvantages of paid advertising:
- Click costs will add up to expensive amounts that may not necessarily be profitable in terms of ROI.
- No long-term effect.
- Does not impact the value of your website.
- The moment you stop pouring money into the campaign, traffic to the site stops coming.
- Exposure to clicks from competitors and other individuals who are not necessarily interested in your product.
So how do we choose what is better for our business? Organic SEO or paid advertising?
Now that you have enough background on the two leading techniques in digital advertising today, you probably want to know how to decide where to put your money. First of all – if you have the opportunity to consult with an advertising agency or an experienced professional in the field – that will always be preferable to making an unequivocal decision on your own. If you have the option to hire the services of an advertising agency to do the work rather than doing it yourself, you can also save yourself a great deal of time and money, assuming the advertising agency is indeed good and professional, of course.
The parameters you want to examine will relate to the costs/monthly budget you want to invest, the time required for you to get results and whether your business can “hold out” until then, the effect you want to achieve in the long term, and the accompanying results of your advertising campaign (such as strengthening your branding and reputation), what field you are in – which may affect where and how you should advertise, and more.
About the Author
Or, SEO Manager at Genesis, a digital agency specializing in branding and advertising across all online media from A to Z. To Genesis’s website >> https://www.gnss.co.il