As a business with a website your primary goal is getting as much genuine traffic as possible that converts in to sales. By genuine we mean real people who have shown an interest in what you have to offer. It’s surprising how many new website owners fall for the trap of buying traffic, without even knowing the source. These cheap packages are usually fake bot generated hits, or worthless hits from expired domains.
One of the most lucrative sources of real traffic is from search engines. This can fall under paid search or organic search. Paid search is particularly beneficial if you need traffic and sales right away.
What is Organic Search?
Organic search has traditionally been the core driver of traffic on the internet. The likes of Google crawl the web, indexing pages and ranking them for search terms, based on the content and a range of other factors.
In order to have success with organic search your site needs to have been established for several months and contain a moderate amount of content. Gradually searchers will stumble on to a page when Google believes it to be one of the most relevant pages for search terms.
While generally this is an automatic process when you launch a website, to rank highly for competitive search terms it is important to implement a search engine optimization strategy, which can be accomplished by hiring a professional internet marketing company.
What is Paid Search?
Google and other search engines also offer premium ad positions alongside regular search results that advertisers bid on.
Perhaps the best thing about this is that it’s always there as a backup in case you run in to trouble with organic search or other methods of generating traffic. Once a campaign is up and running the hits will be instant, so there’s no waiting around to see the payoff.
You can also target specific geographical locations, which is especially beneficial if you only serve a local area.
Though there are certain quality guidelines, paid search is not driven by the content of your pages, but rather how much you are willing to spend. This means you can be on the first page of results straight away (though paid results are distinguishable for organic results).
For example if you had a website selling health foods, you might bid on the search term “Acai Berries” Depending on your budget your ad will then be featured in a number of prominent spots on the first page, alongside regular search results for that term.
Data suggests that paid search ads are clicked more frequently when the search term displays “high commercial intent” meaning the searcher is ready to buy a product and has searched a term like “Buy Acai Berry”
If you’ve only just launched a website you may decide to use paid search to get an initial flow of traffic while your content is still being indexed and ranked. This is also practical if you don’t actually have much content at all.
Also if after several months or even years you’re not getting the organic search rankings you’d hoped for, you might turn to paid search to gain that extra exposure.
In normal circumstances paid search should only be one factor in your overall strategy. A professional internet marketing company will help you balance paid search, with SEO, social media management, and other forms of paid advertising. However if you are having trouble generating traffic, paid search brings immediate results.