Organic SEO - Pay-Per-Click Advertising

Organic SEO vs Pay-Per-Click

For those who are not familiar with the term organic SEO (search engine optimization), it means doing things to get your site to show up at the top of the search engines for targeted keywords. When we say search engines, we really are talking about Google. Because Google gets 90%+ of all search traffic.

What everyone loves about organic SEO is that if you are successful at it, it doesn't cost you anything when someone clicks on your site. If you can get your site to show up at the top of Google when someone does a search for let's say "Local Restaurant", life is good. Which begs the question:

Why would anyone want to start a pay-per-click campaign and pay every time someone clicks their site when they could be at the top of Google in the free organic section?

Let's analyze this. You may not have noticed this, but at the top of most keyword searches there are three or more ads that show up before the organic listings. When you click those ads a company is paying money to Google. That is how Google has grown to be one of the richest companies in the world. Again, why do companies choose pay-per-click? The answer is simple, because organic SEO can be very difficult, especially for some types of businesses.

Besides being difficult, organic SEO can be very expensive.

Wait, did I just hear organic SEO is expensive? I thought being in the organic section of Google didn't cost anything if your site is clicked on. It doesn't cost you anything if someone finds your site in the organic section and clicks on it. But how are you going to get your site to the top of Google for desired keywords? The answer is, you’re probably not. Even the best SEO firms are going to have difficulty getting your site anywhere desired because of the competition already mentioned. I'm sure there are SEO companies that will tell you they can do things for you. Most likely they will tell you they need time. While it's taking time, they will gladly take thousands of dollars every month and if it doesn't work out, they will tell you "sorry, it is tougher than we thought or they will need more time". Sure, they might get you some search terms to the top, but they will be search terms that are rarely searched.

Of course, some company owners are to frugal and smart to throw money away on expensive SEO.

They have a much better idea, they will research how to do SEO themselves and save thousands. While the saving thousands part will be true, the results part of the equation being successful will most likely go from slim to none to just none. As the saying goes, "if I had a nickel for every" client that calls and asks, "what do I need to do to add a blog and change some meta tags etc."? Immediately, I know this is a client researching and looking into SEO. See, one of the most basic things needed with any SEO strategy is adding original content written with targeted keywords. If you do some research on Google you will find lots of articles about SEO. So an eager company owner starts reading it and starts to get excited, they read things about meta tags and writing blogs with keywords in the text etc. and they think to themselves, "I can do this". For the record, blogs with original content can be a great addition to good SEO, but there is more to it.

What is original content?

You may not have known this, but Google crawls the web all the time. They keep looking at every site on the web. Google likes to find articles or text that is not written anywhere except one site, otherwise known as original content. But before I forget, I want to mention that there are companies that write blogs for the business and they tout their SEO benefits. These blog services prey on people who do a little SEO research and read how blogs can help the SEO process, so these blogs that are offered appeal to them. Not only that, I don't have to write them myself, even better. The problem is, those articles are duplicated to hundreds of companies, so when Google crawls the web, they see the same material on many sites resulting in doing nothing for your SEO. But hey, you’re not going to use one of those blogs, you are going to write original content, right? Don't get me wrong, original content is great and it could be all that is needed for a barber shop in Orland Park Illinois to catapult them to the top of Google when someone does a search for "Barber Shop Orland Park". However, it will have little to zero effect on getting your site above big companies. Because writing good content is just one small piece of the puzzle. There are many things that would need to be done to get you past those companies, one of them being turning your company into a nationally recognized company. In the end, most site owners that go down the path of writing blog articles for SEO give up after six months when they see it isn't working. Before long they have a three year old blog on their site that hasn’t been updated in years. So before you spend $50 on some SEO software that will give you reports on everything you need to do to get your site to the top of the search engines. Do yourself a favor and save the 50 bucks.

I have a lot of knowledge when it comes to SEO, I've worked with a commercial mortgage client for almost ten years and we have gotten the site ranked at the top of Google for hundreds of highly searched keywords. But while the commercial mortgage business has plenty of competition, it isn't as crowded as the residential mortgage business. I gave up helping residential mortgage clients with organic SEO over a decade ago. Because unlike other SEO companies, I didn't like taking money unless I genuinely thought it could work. Currently, I help clients with managing pay-per-click campaigns. So, going back to the question of why would you do a pay-per-click campaign over Organic SEO? Because you can start getting leads tomorrow!

If you are interested in help regarding a pay-per-click campaign please call and I will go over what we can do for you.

Frank McKee

Owner/Partner
Phone: 630-552-0677 Ext. 101