The world of search engine marketing is divided into two main areas; organic search engine optimization and pay-per-click (PPC) marketing. Both activities help your site get a top ranking in the search engine results. While the former is all about publicizing your site using particular methods and techniques, the latter is where you pay to be listed in search engines using specific keywords. The aim of both is however, the same - to attract visitors to a site. Also, both involve using keywords in a particular way.

Differences

Organic SEO is all about targeting keyword phrases to increase the quality and number of links to a website. SEO services use special algorithms used by search engines to prove they are the most relevant site for a particular keyword. They even change the code of sites to get them listed in the top most searches. On the other hand, PPC is when you pay if someone clicks on your add these are paid or sponsored links or PPC in the SEM industry jargon.

SEO is all about working on onsite and offsite factors. While onsite factors include navigation, title, structure, copy, and other coding tags and tweaks, offsite factors are all about linking to the right sites, article and directory submissions, and press releases. Organic search engine optimization is the main source of traffic for websites these days. On the other hand, PPC is way of sites to appear in important positions on major search engines by paying the engines. These paid results appear on the top of the page in the right hand column. PPC advertising brings about 30 percent of referrals from the clicks. The important thing to remember is that although both can be used in isolation, if used together they can be very beneficial for a website.

Another major difference between the two is that while PPC is a paid form of advertising, organic search engine optimization is absolutely free. But, climbing high on the ladder of SEO requires a lot of hard work and patience. For climbing high on the ladder of PPC, you require a lot of money. However, both involve hard work in searching for the right mix of keywords to find out which terms to optimize for SEO and which terms to buy for PPC. PPC demands creativity per search term and SEO requires diverse HTML coding for each page of a site. You also have to add title tags for each page in SEO. While PPC is quick to get results, SEO requires some patience on your part. You just need to pay money for PPC and can buy a slot while SEO is all about structure and environment of a site and is a slower process.

Although you will have to be patient for SEO to bear results, SEO services are much cheaper than PPC. Also, as soon as you stop the money, your PPC campaign also ends. On the contrary, even if you stop SEO work on a site, SEO will bring in traffic. But the organic search engine optimization campaign should be updated with changes in the search engine algorithms. The importance of both the techniques can hardly be over-emphasized as both are important to keep pace with the ever-changing web world. Both are important for advertising products and services to your customers and for attracting traffic to a site.