The increasing importance of search engine marketing to online profitability has sparked debates in the industry on whether to use “natural” methods for SEO or opt for pay-per-click advertising. The ideal strategy would be one that incorporates both methods into the SEO scheme as they both have advantages and disadvantages to them. This is rarely the case though and for those that cannot quite decide on which course to take, the following is a rundown of the pros and cons of each method.

Organic SEO

Organic SEO is deemed more credible by people as popularity and traffic are gained through painstaking work and time investment. Your search engine levels are acquired on the basis of relevance and content quality. As long as your website keeps in line with search engine considerations, it continues to belong to the top search results.

Consequently, the results yielded by organic SEO are more enduring. It doesn’t adhere to a pre-planned timeline rather it is an ongoing project that is amended and improved over time. It is a constant part of the marketing strategy. Organic SEO also incurs relatively low costs especially if you implement it yourself. You also have complete control over the content of your website. You decide which data to use and post without interference from third parties so the quality of your content isn’t compromised.

On the downside, organic SEO results are not immediate. It may take a while for your website to see any meaningful traffic and the time spent waiting for these strategies to take effect may impact heavily on it s profitability. SEO is a complicated undertaking and if you are a neophyte in this industry you might inadvertently be putting your website at risk.

Pay-per-Click Advertising

The biggest draw of pay-per-click advertising is the near-instantaneous results. Traffic is driven immediately to your website as your link is prominently shown over the search engine. This attribute of pay-per-click advertising is especially attractive to websites that are starting out. Pay-per-click advertising is also easier and faster to implement because it is a fairly uncomplicated procedure.

A drawback is that pay-per-click advertising can be quite costly. Studies show that the rates for PPC advertising are rising and as more people visit your site, you pay more. There are also studies showing that people tend to distrust paid searches and are therefore less likely to click on these links compared to organic search results.