The Main Difference Between Organic SEO and PPC

10.18.2016
The Main Difference Between Organic SEO and PPC

The Main Difference Between Organic SEO and PPC

The Difference Between SEO and Pay-per-Click (PPC) Marketing

Understanding Web Market for Your Unique Needs

At Bear River Web Design, we have a passion for SEO and Pay-Per-Click marketing. We pride ourselves in doing well for our clients’ in our online marketing strategies, and are always looking for ways to get you more traffic, clicks, and brand outreach. However, web-marketing can be confusing to the new comer. In this article, we would like to explain the main difference between Organic Search Marketing, or SEO, and Pay-per-Click marketing. Each has its unique features and can benefit your business in difference ways.

Organic Web Marketing: Search Engine Optimization, or SEO

Organic web marketing, or SEO, is the practice of optimizing our pages’ code in order to increase our visibility on search engines. Basically, when someone wants to buy our product or service and searches for it on the internet, we want to be the first result. The first several results on Google gets a vast majority of the online conversions for any given service or product. We cover the definition and some technical details of the SEO process in our article Everything You Need to Know About On-Page SEO.

With that dramatically profitable spot seemingly so ripe for the picking, it’s no surprise that predatory companies promising fast, unrealistic results have cropped up all over the world. In truth, organic marketing, while very affordable, is a difficult industry that requires patience, time, and experience. At Bear River Web Design, we have all that - and we are emotionally invested in helping you achieve better results on Google in a with lasting, profitable effects. Our SEO Services page can help you determine if SEO is right for you.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Marketing, and What it Means to You

What many SEOs may not tell you is that it’s very challenging to reach the front page on Google, especially quickly. That said, there is a way around it - Pay-Per-Click Advertising through services such as Google Adwords.

The idea is fairly simple - instead of trying to reach the top of the search results through sweat, blood and tears alone, we instead pay Google to place ads at the top of results for us. Those ads look something like this:

Google Adwords Ad Example

While the premise is simple, this form of marketing involves paying a certain fee, called a bid, when our advertisement is clicked on Google. The price varies according to competition, field, and other factors. Whether our ad even shows up on Google at all is determined by multiple factors, including our bid, the quality of the ad, the relevance of the ad to our chosen keywords, how well our webpage is designed, and more. While we do gain the benefit of reaching top results, it takes a lot of experience to utilize our money wisely in PPC campaigns. We will cover the nuances of PPC in future articles.

PPC advertising allows us to compete with the bigger, more established guys on the web, but sometimes it isn’t a profitable means of advertising. The costs associated with PPC vary by situation - it takes someone trained in the markets and SEO in general to know for certain whether PPC is right for a business. However, PPC can be a huge benefit to smaller businesses with specific niches and established, focused goals. At Bear River Web Design, we are happy to answer your questions and help you develop that kind of strategy.

Into Action!

The "too long, didn't read" summary of the difference between organic web marketing and PPC is this:

SEO, or organic marketing, is a slow but sure method of improving our search rankings, and therefore sales or outreach, with minimal associated cost. Meanwhile, Pay-Per-Click marketing is a more specialized, costly form of marketing with big gains for people with focused niches and specific goals. Either way, it is in our best interest to trust our web marketing strategies to experienced professionals if we want to avoid common pitfalls - and wasted money - that may plague us along the way.

Now that you have a basic understanding on the differences between Organic SEO and Pay-Per-Click marketing, you can make educated decisions on whether or not the investment is worth it for your business.

We strive to provide you with transparent information to help you determine which of our services are best for you, and SEO/PPC campaigns are no different. If you’re thinking about investing in SEO or PPC and have questions, or if you would like help learning to do it on your own, contact us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or through our Contacts Page. Thanks for reading, and remember to follow us on Facebook if you found our article useful!