Thursday, 4 October 2012

Paid vs Organic Search

Organic Search vs Paid Search
What are they? What is the difference?

Organic Search is the links that appears in your search engine that has the most relevance to the topic you searched. This is the most used type or search.

 
 Example of Organic Search

As you can see in the example, when digital river is searched, the most relevant links appear below the search box.






 
 
Whereas, paid search is the word ads. Site owners pay an advertising fee, and these ads are posted on the right hand side and sometimes at the top, it is indicated by a light pink shadow (as seen below)
 
Which is more effective?




Organic search is free and information that is offered is generally credible (checking for author and credibility is important when gathering information). However, it is not easy getting to the first few pages, which realistically is when we all stop looking.

Paid search can be recorded which helps us marketers a lot. It is an expense but can leave a greater impression on people. The ads don`t stay long but can gain more traffic.

How do businesses use these?
Targeting
In terms on targeting, paid ads show up when the keyword is searched. For example if the word dog food is searched, an ad may appear similar to the example above.
In organic search, the person who is conducting the research is the target market, purposely wanting to become aware of the product and what other attributes are offered.

Branding

When a company is in the top search results it can give the impression that the company is important. Therefore, companies strive to secure a better position in organic search than their rivals. When it comes to paid search, awareness occurs in both customer and non-customers, which is what the company`s goal is.

Control

Traffic count is offered to help determine how many people are interested in the product or service.

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Organic and paid search are used to gain awareness and a way of advertising.  Both can be used effectively to get a potential customer.
Thank you for reading, Heather A. Stevens

16 comments:

  1. Terrific post. Organic and paid search is common type of search which run into us a lot since we almost use google everyday. Sometime I find it helpful when I need some inspiration to expand my mind of relevant cases, so it does raise the awareness of product/service brand effectively and benefit consumer and marketer mutually.

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  2. That's very true. Do you think it is more beneficial for B2B or B2C?

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    1. Personally I'd choose B2C coz it's already provided enough information for individual to check and act. For B2C, more depth and details are needed because it's such a complex process and some other external factors besides website channel are involved.

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    2. Great Post! I think the business development cycle greatly reflects whether you use Organic or Paid Search's. If a company is just starting out, then they have no choice but to use the Organic search. However, as you explained, if the company has the resources then it is beneficial to use paid search's.

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  3. the good thing about paid search is that you can use it to get your site or blog or whatever to the first or second page of a search engine. after that, organic searches can take over and bring up the rank of the page even more, so the business saves money by not using paid searches any more. nice job!

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  4. It is very true that both organic search and paid search have advantages and disadvantages. There are many factors affecting which method a company should choose. I do agree that if a company is limited in funds they would be unable to use paid search. However, just because a company has enough money to do so, does not mean that paid search is going to necessarily be the right choice.

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    1. I agree that both have advantages and disadvantages. I also think it is hard for companies to use paid search when they are a small company or short on cash, but there are so many advancements that help with this type of issue.

      For Example: Google Adwords allows you to control the maximum a company spends on ads. They can completely control their costs.

      This information was found here:
      http://support.google.com/adwords/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1704424

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  5. I was actually really confused between these two types of ads, you really clarified the differences for me.
    It is hard to say which is better, but I believe it will depend on the objective of the ad and website. Staying at the top of the search engine might a major concern for a company focusing on gaining awareness or knowledge. This would entice people to click on the landing page or site and look into the product or brand.

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  6. Great post!
    I think that an organic search would definitely bring forth more credible results, but the paid searches would for sure be seen by a lot more people.

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  7. Excellent post! At first like Janelle stated above, I myself was really confused when trying to differentiate the two types of ads. Now knowing more about them, I personally prefer organic and natural searches. I trust those ads more than I can the paid ones, and they are ones that have been linked to key words that I am looking for.

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  8. Great post!

    I had no idea what the difference was between paid and organic searches. For myself, I never click on the paid searches.Even though they appear first on the page, they always seemed less detail driven as the organic searches. It's become a habit just to scroll down right away.

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  9. Great post! I would agree with everyone else when I say that I too, was confused when trying to differentiating the differences, but through your post I quickly understood. I agree with Austin when he says that organic ads would be more credible, however paid are going have more opportunities to be seen.

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  10. Paid search is more beneficial for a website because you have full control over paid search but unfortunately you to pay for it whereas organic search is mostly considered as trusted search by the searchers because these show up when relevant keywords are searched and these are SEO and it is free.

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  11. Personally speaking, my opinion differs than that of Sam. I feel as if paid searches are rarely coming up as what I am truly seeking in my search. I trust the organic approach far more as the organic results are much more suited to my specific needs. This wasn't always the case but after a few times taking a look at them and being let down, no longer will I.

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    1. You couldn't be more accurate, Joel. I've found the organic searches to be far more accurate and relevant to my needs, whereas the paid ads are slightly too generic and purposed to make a sale and exploit the visitor.

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  12. Great post.
    In my opinion,paid search results can give instant results as it is more easier to measure the clicks of the people on your site.
    the higher you rank on a search page(at least being one of the top 10 pages)the more people click on your website and on the other hand; the lower you rank the less people visit your site!
    every marketer is trying to be on the first page, eg when i type shoes on google, the first site that appears is Alsoshoes, this means that alsoshoes gets a lot of visitors.

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