The popularity of PPC or pay per click search engines in the recent past has once again sparked off the debate that has been raging for the last few years. Is PPC a better option than Organic SEO? Would it give much better results? Some webmasters suggest using a combination of the two. Is it justified? Most webmasters who are new to the internet and online marketing techniques face this dilemma. There are a lot of questions that are unanswered. Here is an attempt to answer most of those.

Organic SEO: Pros and cons

Organic SEO is all about getting listed in search results pages without paying the search engines even a cent out of your pocket to the search engine (Paid submissions). It involves a series of techniques that will optimize your website and improve its quality. You will use better and more informative content on your website. As a result of this, more websites will link to your website. Your website will be restructured in a way that users find it easy to use and search engine spiders can scan through it easily. The results will be long term and your website will be listed on the top of search results for a long time to come. The only negative aspect about organic SEO (if you consider this to be negative) is the fact that it can be time consuming. Some search engines have created a set of filters that take into consideration the age of the domain, the age of the website etc. So, you have to set yourself a realistic time frame before you start to see results.

PPC: Pros and Cons

PPC is the new age marketing mantra. It's all about getting results and getting them fast. PPC or Pay per click is a competitive bidding process in which you bid against other similar websites to get the top position in paid listings on search results pages. For example, if you have a website that markets pet food and you would like your ad to appear on the top of the search results page whenever someone searches for pet food, then you will bid for the keyword 'pet food'. Then depending on what you are willing to spend and what your competitors are willing to spend for the keyword, your ad will appear at the relevant position as decided by the bidding process. The main advantage is that you don't have to wait for even an hour. Traffic will start flowing to your website, the moment your ads start to appear on search engine result pages. Now for the cons. PPC campaigns are extremely difficult to maintain. They can easily get out of your budget range if you are not careful. Not all ads can give you the same results. So, you have to conduct a lot of research to get a combination of ads that give you the best results while costing you the least.

Which is better?

Now that you know the pros and cons of each one, it's up to you to decide which one is better. Most experts recommend that you start off with PPC for a short period of time whilst carrying out organic SEO techniques at the back end. Then once you have a steady flow of traffic to your website and your website is optimized for search engines, you can slowly reduce your PPC budget and then stop the campaign eventually. Mind you that the final decision rests totally on you. There are people who use only one or both of these strategies.