Search engine optimization is more effective than pay per click if you want to get more visitors. It’s certainly better than Facebook PR. There. I said it. Now, I’m not going as far as to claim that pay per click is worthless, but I will say that, when compared to search engine optimization, it falls short. This is due to a bunch of different reasons, including user preference, cost, and durability. Any one of these factors would give search engine optimization the edge, but taken together it really shows how it blows pay per click out of the water.
Let’s start with one of the most pressing why search engine optimization is more useful: cost. Let’s imagine you were a company that sold cars. You would have a list of keywords, which are the words you would like to be found under in Google. And, let’s say that term costs one dollar per click. And, let’s say that keyword gets one million searches a month. The first result in Google can expect to get 36% of all clicks, or 360,000 clicks a month. A search engine optimization business charges a flat fee of usually around $5,000 a keyword. So, if you went the pay per click route, you would pay $360,000 a month, versus $5,000: in other words, you would pay only 1.4% the cost.
Another factor that shows why search engine optimization is more useful is user preference. There have been dozens of studies that have all conclusively demonstrated one thing: users prefer organic results to paid advertisements. According to a Cornell eye-tracking study, 100% of users looked at the first result in Google, compared to only 22% who looked at the paid advertisements. As you clearly see, search engine optimization is greatly preferred.
The third big reason that search engine optimization is a wiser choice is that search engine optimization is significantly more durable than pay per click. While search engine optimization works best when it is being maintained, it does much better with downtime than pay per click. Let’s imagine your company goes through a bad year and you no longer have the funds to pay for search engine optimization or pay per click. If you stopped your pay per click campaign that’s it; it’s over. You won’t be on the first page of Google until you pay again. If you stop paying for search engine optimization you will stay on the first page for a few months after that, so search engine optimization clearly represents a more lasting investment.
Because of each of these three reasons, search engine optimization is a better choice in most instances, but that’s not to say that pay per click is worthless. Search engine optimization takes more time to start up than pay per click, so pay per click could be a wiser choice if you have a short time frame. However, as you can clearly see, search engine optimization is probably a better choice for most businesses.
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