A lot of people decide to take the free way to getting a good search engine positioning, using various strategies and techniques to make sure they get good organic rankings with Google, Yahoo and all the other big names out there.
Other people swear by the pay per click campaigns that are run by those same companies, giving them a better chance of appearing on page one of Google without having to wait to get indexed and climb the rankings as a result.
Organic or Sponsored Ads?
Do you prefer to get your search engine positioning the old fashioned way, with a bit of elbow grease and hard work? Or do you prefer to chuck a bit of cash at it and get some instant results?
In truth, one way isn’t necessarily any better than the other. Whatever way you choose to try and get a good search engine positioning, you will find that there are pros and cons to it.
If you go via the free route you will find you need to put in a lot of effort to get the search engine positioning you want. It could take months to achieve it, and even when you do you will have to fight hard to keep it.
The AdWords Campaign
Paying to take part in the AdWords campaign can bring you results within minutes of signing up. But it does of course cost money and if you aren’t careful any profits you might have made can be swallowed up in paying for all those hits.
It’s clear that whatever route you take to getting a better search engine positioning, you need to be aware of the pitfalls that can trip you up en route. Some people prefer the free way, simply because if they make a mistake all they will lose is a few ranking places. Their money is still safe. And, the benefit of organic search results can provide more viral marketing results than pay per click.
About Sean Rasmussen
I guess its a case-by-case decision for what and why you choose one or the other. I am still at the beginning, learning the ropes and trying things out, so the free ranking is great for me (also to see what I have learned). Paying for Search Engine Positions will become an option once I have something I am earning money with already and want to push it further I guess.
Hi Sean,
I’ve been focusing on trying to get good organic rankings with the search engines. I see SEO as a valuable skill that I need to master because I think the ability to rank sites Number 1 in Google without paying for it is essential to online success. It probably isn’t essential but it looks really cool when you do it.
Adwords is something I’ve been slowly building up my knowledge on for months now. It’s something that I’ll probably be doing sometime in the near future. I’m nearly there.
Keep it up Jazz, you are doing well
Maybe free SEO optimisation or attaining high search engine rankings isn’t essential, but onething it does say, if you score high, is that your page/site/blog has good quality content.
It’s a bit like a review. Once you have good content with the right keywords, internal, inbound and outbound links, images and so on, all that is usually necessary to maintain that rank is to keep adding pages or refining them.
And, it is cheaper than PPC
I will be sticking with organic rankings for the time being until I gain the knowledge on how to use Adwords properly
Hi Gee,
You are really good at doing SEO so I’m not surprised you are going to do that. I think it’s a great idea to work to your strengths.
Hi Jazz
Yes it is a good idea to be working to your strengths while building up the knowledge in other areas.
You would do very well link building with blog commenting as that is definitely one of your strengths.
It is an interesting decision in trying to decide to go for paid vs free ranking on Google. I think that learning how to use both effectively will take me a bit of time, so for now I’ll focus on the former. But having the ability to do both of these well would provide a great set of tools to be able to pounce on opportunities as they arise.
Being retired and having seen over half of my RSSP disappear with the last stock market boondoggle, I prefer to take the least expensive route for most things.
Even though being retired is hard work I’m sure I can allocate the time to effectively carry out most of the tasks required to get good organic rankings.
Remember, I have that Time Management tool open in a tab on my browser as I sit here and work. And I learned that here as well.
I will be sticking with organic ranking. There may be more work involved but it is my understanding that running a pay per click campaign has it’s very own specialty field. If you don’t know all the in’s and out’s it can be extremely costly. It is certainly one that I will be leaving to the more experienced for now.
It is very easy to lose a lot of money is Google Adwords or Yahoo Search marketing if you dont keep careful eye on what you are doing.
It depends on what you want to do with your sites and the monetization of them. I don’t see any harm in having a paid option while you are putting in the hard work to get your site to the top.
I have recently noticed a lot of sites hold No.1 organic ranking, but also have a spnsored ad – and when they are put above the organic results (instead of the RH side) I wonder how much money that company is losing by not watching what is happening.
Hi Sean,
I want to learn all I can about organic ranking before I think about paying for advertising. I think if I do that I have a better chance of knowing what I’m doing and less likely to lose money from inexperience.
Thinking about paid search engine positioning is a long way off for me because I haven’t established my niche product yet. Organic ranking is good for now.