Organic vs. PPC Google advertising

As the largest of search engines, webmasters constantly endeavor to find more efficient ways to get traffic from Google. The two methods of diverting search traffic from Google are PPC advertising and organic search results. Both methods can be successful and have advantages and disadvantages. Below, we will explain what each is and what its relative pros and cons are. Note – both methods can also apply to other search engines and other sites, but the core advantages and disadvantages are the same.

PPC Traffic

PPC is short for Pay Per Click advertising. With PPC advertising, Google displays ads for the target website along with search results and on other relevant sites that have signed up for the Adsense program. The owner of the target website pays a small fee for each web browser who finds the ad interesting and clicks through to the target website.

There is one primary advantage to using PPC traffic. That advantage is that it is virtually instantaneous. Minutes after starting a campaign, it is possible to have traffic and money coming in.

The major disadvantage of PPC traffic is that it constantly requires oversight and money input. Stop paying and the traffic stops coming in.

Organic Traffic

This is using solid SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to climb in search engine results to be one of the first sites that appear. The top results have a tremendous advantage in gaining traffic.

There are a couple of major advantages to building solid organic traffic. The first major advantage is that once a solid traffic stream has been established, it will continue with very little effort and money. Because of this, a webmaster is not tied to the routine of daily assessing statistics and adjusting a campaign. This smaller workload equates to the ability to have more websites operating, multiplying profits. The second major advantage is that by building the site’s organic traffic, the webmaster is also building the site’s value. Unlike PPC, organic advertising will increase the potential sale price of a site because it has been set up to attract traffic as opposed to having traffic pushed toward it.

There is only one real disadvantage to building a strong search engine presence, but it is one that causes far too many webmasters to fail. This disadvantage is the fact that gaining organic traffic is a long term approach. Those not prepared to treat the proposition as a real business and have patience will often simply give up before any real results are achieved, leaving more profit to those few who are prepared to invest the time in building a successful site.