The Ultimate Guide for Organic vs Paid Search

In this age where almost everything is available online, having your business visible in the online search engine stands as a huge factor for success. Search engines, which act as a guide for potential customers through the vast content available online, helps lead them to the products or services they seek. By having a high visibility on search engine results pages (SERPs), you can significantly enhance your brand awareness, credibility, and ultimately, your conversions.

There are two primary ways a business can use to capture this visibility: Organic Search and Paid Search. 

Organic Search revolves around optimizing websites to align with search engine algorithms. It’s a cost effective approach that builds long term equity and growth for a brand. Paid Search on the other hand involves purchasing a spot, or and ads, to appear in SERPs. This solution offers immediate visibility and targeted reach. 

On the surface, both of these strategies help users discover your business on the SERPs and improve your online visibility. Diving deeper, there are more differences between those two methods than just the way they approach the users.

What is Organic Search?

Organic Search is the method in which the users discover content naturally on search engine results pages without the help of paid advertising. The results shown are highly based on the algorithms of search engines that crawl, index, and rank the website and content based on relevance and quality. 

The act of improving your visibility for organic search is called Search Engine Optimization (SEO). This is done by implementing a set of fixes and practices specifically designed to help improve a website’s compatibility with the search engine algorithms. You can find out more about SEO through one of our articles What is SEO and Why SEO is Important for Business.

How much would organic search cost?

Technically, getting your website to appear on organic search would cost you nothing. Optimizing your website and off-site elements like the GMB is also cost-free.

However, there would be charges incurred if you decided to outsource your website optimization effort to an SEO service provider. Those charges are mainly for the manpower cost of the service, as optimizing a website for organic search requires huge and continuous effort.

Doing the optimization yourself might seem like a wise decision cost-wise, but the risk far outweighs the benefits. With Google constantly updating their algorithm, there is always the risk of your website being penalized or getting delisted from the organic search listing if you did not adhere to the latest guideline.

Benefits of Organic Search

There are plenty of benefits for taking the organic search route for your website. Some of them are : 

• Low Cost –  It is a cost effective strategy as it does not require any payment for getting traffic, instead relying on the quality and accuracy of your content. 
• Higher Credibility – it helps in building brand trust and credibility, as users often perceive organically ranked websites as more authoritative and trustworthy.
• Long Term Benefits – a well optimized site can maintain its ranking and continue to attract visitors through organic search over a long period of time after the optimizing effort has ended.

Downsides of Organic Search

• Takes Time – when optimizing your website for organic search, you would need to give it some time before you can see the intended results. 

• Continuous Effort – with Google constantly updating their algorithm, website owners will need to stay ahead of the curve and keep optimizing their website based on the latest best practices.

What is Paid Search?

Paid Search is a digital marketing method where businesses pay to appear on SERPs as an advertisement. Unlike organic search which relies on algorithm and content quality, paid search can provide an immediate visibility to the users through Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising. In PPC, the advertisers cost would be incurred whenever a user clicked on their ads, which generally meant a higher traffic would correlate to a higher running cost.

Just like organic search, there are plenty of benefits for using paid search. One of the available options for paid ads is Google Ads. You can have a look at how the ads work and how it may help your business here. 

The act of optimizing your PPC ads is a subset of Search Engine Marketing (SEM), which is aimed at optimizing the cost by running the ads more efficiently and improving traffic gained through the ads. You can find out more about Google Ads SEM Services here.

How much would paid search cost?

The cost for listing your website on paid search will vary depending on the platform and industry. Certain industries have a higher competition and will incur additional cost if you want to aim for keywords with higher success rate.

You would only need to pay for those advertisements when an audience clicked on it, meaning it is a Pay-Per-Click type of advertisement. The cost would also vary if you’re outsourcing the ads management to a service provider.

Benefits of Paid Search

• Instant Results – it can deliver fast and almost instantaneous results, with the ads able to go live shortly after your campaign is set up. 
• Higher Control Over Traffic –  you can target specific audiences through detailed ad customization, which can include the demographics and location of the search being made. 
• Data Based Results – paid search provides measurable results with comprehensive analytics to track the performance of each ads campaign. This helps with further optimization based on real data.

Downsides of Paid Search

• Higher Cost – you will be charged for listing your site in paid search, and additional charges if you’re outsourcing the paid search management.
• Effects End As Soon As Campaigns End – your listing will be taken down as soon as your campaign ends.

Similarities Between Paid and Organic Search

There are a lot of similarities between organic and paid search. Knowing it is important to know which one is suited for your current business goal.

Paid search usually appears at the top of the search result page with a little ‘Sponsored’ label above the listing, or any other label signifying that the listing is an advertisement. Organic search would be listed below the paid search listing, without any labels. Other than that, the appearance of both listings are similar. 

Both types of listing would have the website name at the top, Title Tag depicting what the page or ads is about, and Meta Descriptions describing what the listing is about.

Other than the appearance, both organic and paid search share the same aim which is to boost the website’s traffic and visibility. The way how they achieve these goals though, differs.

The Key Differences Between Organic Search and Paid Search

There are a few differences between organic search and paid search. They are:

	Organic Search	Paid Search
Cost	Running cost is free.	Cost depends on campaign, keywords and numbers of traffic targeted.
Results Duration	Longer time needed to see intended results, but results would last longer.	Instantaneous results, but it would end as soon as the campaign ended.
User Perception	Higher trustworthiness	May be seen as solely a promotional material
Control	Limited – cannot get a specific spot in the SERPs and depend on algorithm	Higher control – can target specific location (top or bottom of SERPs) and only a specific keywords

If you’re still unsure whether to focus on Organic or Paid Search, you can head on over to our article on SEO and SEM: How They Work & Boost Your Business to get more in depth info on their uses and benefits for your business.

Should I Use Organic Search or Paid Search?

Choosing between organic search or paid search depends on your business goals.

Organic search is suitable if you’re looking for a long term business boost. Aside from increase in traffic and visibility, having your website on high ranking in organic search will help in boosting the trust and credibility it has with the customer. This listing and effect would also stick for much longer, even after the optimization effort has ended.

Paid search is a suitable choice if you’re looking for an instant boost to traffic and visibility, for example during a limited time of sales or promotion. With the ability to cater your ads for specific demographic and location, you will be able to aim for a specific target audience and bring out the full effect of your ads.

Does Paid Search Help With Organic Search?

While there’s no direct correlation between paid and organic search rankings, they might have an effect on each other. 

For example, you can use paid search to improve your brand awareness towards the users. By having a higher brand visibility and recognition, it can positively affect your organic search’s click through rates (CTR) as the users are much more familiar with your brand.

However, it’s important to remember that there is no direct benefit on the organic search for websites that advertise with paid search. Your focus on improving your organic search ranking should always be placed on creating high quality content and optimizing your website for the search engines.

Conclusion

For long term online growth and brand awareness, optimizing your organic search is an ideal strategy especially if you’re a startup or established businesses lacking a strong online presence. Organic search is also an efficient and cost effective way to attract new leads and customers.

Paid search, on the other hand, offers a quick online presence boost which is perfect for limited time promotions. You can target specific keywords to reach customers at each specific stage of the decision making process. It is the best choice for situations like a mid-year sale by an online electronics store. 

You can also combine organic and paid search optimization for best results. Organic listings build trust and credibility, which helps lead to a higher ad click through rates and conversions.

Of course, there is more to optimizing the organic and paid search than just picking the right keywords. If you wish to know more on how SEO and SEM works, you can contact us and we’ll be happy to assist you. If you’re looking to know more about the cost for organic search optimization, you can have a look at our article highlighting the pricing here.