Organic or Paid search marketing: Which is better?

UPdated By Les. Jan 2022

The short answer is that we really need both organic and paid search marketing.

Why?

Both have to be part of an overall digital marketing strategy for any business.

Organic search marketing is a strategy that relies on the natural action of Google’s search engine algorithm to push your content up higher in its SERP or Search Engine Results Pages. With organic search marketing, the website is not spending any money on advertising, and all of its traffic comes from the search engines. As a result, organic search marketing has low cost of entry.

When it comes to organic traffic, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) does help to bring traffic to a website to an extent but we are at the mercy of the search engines. Traffic can be very inconsistent and engines like Google Search are always implementing regular changes. These changes are always impacting search results. Google never outlines in detail what is being changed in the search engine and we only find out when traffic patterns change.

With paid search marketing, the advertiser pays a fee to the search engine to be included in its paid advertisements. The paid search marketing strategy relies on paying for ad space on Google’s SERP or Search Engine Results Pages. Paid search traffic (e.g. Google Ads) boosts website awareness and visibility. While this paid search technique may seem more expensive upfront, it can provide more immediate results.

If one uses Google Ads effectively with relevant Ad copy and campaign targeting, paid listings can achieve positioning at the top of the other paid advertisers and on top of of organic search results. Being listed first offers great advantage over competitors and will definitely boost traffic.

Feel free to read our blog “What are the Digital Marketing Strategy Components?” to learn more about digital marketing.