Did you know that 85% of internet users will use a search engine first when looking for products or services? And 95% of those users don’t look past the first three search results pages. This is why you want your business to be on the first page — and even better — on top! It’s possible to be on the front page of a search engine like Google. There’s two ways to get there: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay Per Click (PPC). SEO is done organically, takes longer to see results but is longer lasting; PPC is a paid advertisement and results are seen immediately, but can disappear when the promotion ends.  

SEO	PPC
Organic, natural	Contrived
Long lasting	Lasts as long as budget
Appears slowly over time	Appears immediately
Requires a length of time for effect	Can be as short as one day and still effect

  Let’s talk about some other key differences. These include position, results and price.

Position:

SEO and PPC cause your website to land in different position on search engine result pages. Search results effected by SEO will show up in the main body of the results page. The better the webpage is optimized for SEO, the higher it will be in the rankings. SEO results can include all webpages that the search engine thinks is relatable. On the other hand, PPC listings are displayed on the top of the results page as “sponsored links.” PPC targets a certain audience based on different categories specified when building the ad.

Results:

With an SEO campaign, it may take several months for a website to show higher up in search results. However, this means that there can be continuous traffic over a longer period of time. PPC campaigns show immediately, which can result in an immediate boost in traffic. However, once the campaign is stopped and the budget is removed, the search result is removed.

Price:

For SEO campaigns, there are no associated costs. These are done organically. The only costs you’d incur are if you hired an agency or an employee to do it for you. For PPC, there is an ongoing price per click. You can set this price when building the ad. The greater your budget, the more traffic you will receive. You don’t pay anything to show the ad, you only pay whenever someone clicks your link. Both campaigns can be a great way to build your business.  

It’s always encouraging to learn about how to provide success for our clients, and it’s rewarding to our team to be recognized for our hard work.   Recently, we’ve got some great news! We’re happy to announce that Tricore Solutions is now part of the Rackspace family, we’ve been identified as instrumental to the paid and organic search efforts.  This is evident from organic search results on such massive terms as “Managed Applications” and myriad other valuable search terms.  This is the largest merger that Rackspace has ever announced. Click here to read the full story!

Google AdWords has quickly become the best way for businesses to target new customers. With AdWords businesses of all sizes are able to specify a budget, create an ad, and identify keywords to promote themselves to customers that matter. An AdWords campaign can get your business’ search listing on the first page fast with a carefully crafted bidding strategy and effective keyword choices. Google is the first place that many individuals go when looking for new services and you can be the first thing they see with Boston Web Group’s expert AdWords Campaign Management services.

Boston Web Group understands that the methods used to achieve an efficient AdWords campaign are always changing. Keywords will become more and less popular causing search volume to fluctuate and necessitate changes to an AdWords campaign. There are always new ways to get better performance and one that must always be kept in mind is updating your pay-per-click campaign’s ads to target trending keywords. A user wants to click on a link that will bring them to exactly what they’re looking for. Creating ads that are relevant for specific terms is a great way to get more clicks on your ad.

Google AdWords includes the AdWords Campaign Experiments functionality so you can test any changes to your campaign on a limited section of your account’s activity. With AdWords Campaign Experiments you can test out any changes made and see exactly how well they worked before making changes to an entire ad group. Setting up an experiment is simple, choose what you would like to test, specify how long you would like the test to run for, and determine how much of your activity you would like to run the experiment on. You will have the ability to select exactly how much of your activity you would like designated for experiment to get a clearer picture of how the updates impact performance.

AdWords Campaign Experiments allow users to gain valuable insight into the effect that making changes to a campaign will have. Often an experiment will play out as expected and the update will be pushed live. Other times, however, an AdWords Campaign Experiment will reveal user behavior that wasn’t expected, leading to more refined edits to ensure a successful AdWords Campaign.