Digital Marketing has expanded the range of strategies available for corporate success. Two of these strategies are on the rise and are the source of many questions from users and professionals: what is the difference between organic search and paid search? Which one should I stick to? Which is the best? Do they really work?
These questions don’t have an exact answer, and vary according to the segment and goals of each company. The fact is that organic and paid strategies, when correctly executed, complement each other and can generate positive results.
Search engines have become part of most people’s everyday life. According to the Internet Live Stats website, around 3.5 billion searches are made on Google every day. Among organic and paid results, users pick the one which they deem to provide the best answer to their questions.
What is the difference between organic and paid search results? When you perform a search, within a few seconds you will come across ads which appear at the top of the page. These are paid search results, and they appear because a company has paid for them to be displayed there. Just below them are the organic results, which are organised according to how relevant Google’s algorithm considers them to be to your search. Read on to learn more about each category.
Paid search involves a direct cost for your ad to be prominently displayed and drive visitors to your company’s site. They work by selecting keywords that match what the user is looking for.
Many assume that “whoever pays more, appears more”, but that is not the case. Generally, even when it comes to sponsored links, search engines prioritize relevant and original content, on sites which offer the best user experience.
Proper traffic management requires detailed planning, based on metrics and a well-defined target audience. One of the biggest advantages of paid media is that results are visible almost immediately, and the odds of user conversion are increased.
These are links and sites that appear “naturally” in search engines. This type of traffic does not have a direct cost. For the most relevant results to be displayed to search engine users, the algorithm considers a number of ranking factors. The three main ones are:
- Quality, relevance and originality of content;
- User experience and site navigability;
- Backlink profile.
Our latest LATAM SEO report found that 45% of Latin Americans don’t click beyond the first page of results, 18% only look at the first 3 results, and 42% click on the first answer that comes up.
This emphasizes the importance of achieving a strong positioning on search engines, thus ensuring greater visibility and authority for your brand. To do so, a number of SEO strategies can be developed to optimize your site and content, making it more relevant to users and, consequently, rank higher in organic search results.
SEO stands for “Search Engine Optimization”, and is a set of techniques to make it more likely for certain web pages to be displayed as answers for specific search terms.
These techniques include: competitor and keyword analysis, production of relevant and properly structured content, On-Page and Off-Page optimization, proper text formatting, and building a backlinks profile.
It should be noted that SEO techniques are constantly developing, as search engine algorithms are always changing, and that they have a long-term effect, helping to establish credibility and brand recognition.
Besides the obvious discrepancies in cost and activities, paid and organic search each have their singularities and advantages. While paid search requires a short-term effort that can generate instant results, organic search requires more persistence and delivers longer-lasting results.
The vast majority of companies opt to use both strategies, but as we have already mentioned here, this can vary according to your market segment, your brand objectives, and your target audience.
In practice, both efforts are complementary: paid search yields audience segmentation information and trending keywords, which can be useful in your SEO strategy.
If your goal is to be more prominently displayed online, increasing your visibility and conversion, then combining organic search with paid search may be worthwhile. The combination will have search engine users discovering your brand in no time, while you work to secure your brand’s long-term presence on Google as well.
Now that you know the difference between organic and paid search, get in touch to find out how we at Sherlock Communications can support you with these strategies. And if you want to check out more tips on digital marketing, keep browsing our blog.
