Present-day life is completely linked to the use of search engines. More than 90% of us online experience search engines daily, around 3.5 billion searches are used daily. Have you ever thought about how often we googled something we want to know about? We get millions of results on SERPs within a fraction of seconds. We can find both organic as well as paid search in the result.

The only difference between both the searches is just how they reach us. Searches are valuable, every business owner must agree on that but they start to disagree when it comes to organic vs paid search. We generally find some ads or sponsored websites at the top of SERP. All these ads and sponsors are paid search which is related to our search while in the middle of SERP we find organic searches that come from all around the web.

What is Organic Search and Paid Search?

Organic Search results are the actual results that are found below the ads in the SERPs. They are actual, in the sense that these results are found by the search engines using an algorithm that analyzes all the pages across the web. It displays all the pages that contain the most relevant information accordion to our search. All the sites are scanned by Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for various forms like proper title tag, meta description, keywords, etc., the more relevant your information is the higher you rank. Companies might bribe a lot of money to SEO agencies to get a high rank. Making it to the top of SERPs is not a piece of cake. It’s a long process and it often takes six or more months to climb the cliff of ranking.

Paid Search results are ads paid by businesses to be displayed at the top of organic results and boost rank. This is done by investing money into Search Engine Marketing (SEM) when a specific keyword is searched. Many marketers use AdWords to design ads and bid on the placement in the auction. Paid results are usually distinguished by organic searches by visual clues, generally having a small ‘ads’ label on the left-hand side of the URL. One who pays the highest in the AdWords auction has that best visibility. As the rules for ranking, Google has it for both paid as well as organic search to ensure that the ads that are ranked high still have the most relevant information and put user’s experience above all.

Paid vs Organic Search – Which Approach is Best for my Business?

To compete with today’s digital world, marketers should use both paid and organic search strategies as it benefits the most business. Considering both the searches, both have features that have unique benefits. Both options are useful in achieving different goals as per our needs. No doubt that organic search results have an evergreen presence on SERP and assuming that the information remains relevant over the years you can continue climbing the rank. On the other hand, paid ads stop being displayed as soon as you stop paying for it and might help you promote a new service. If your business has an online presence, it is important to understand the difference between both the searches and how it can be applied to your business.

Organic Search Pros and Cons

We all assume that if a website is at the top of the Search Engine Result Page(SERPs), then it is the most useful and trusted source of information. After all, you beat all the other businesses to be at the top of the search. Being at the top sends out a message of credibility and decency for your readers.

Pros

1. Authority and Credibility: When a website follows all the best practices of SEO, it automatically gains authority and higher ranks on the search engines. It means that search engines acknowledge you as a reliable source of information for some specific keywords. This ends up boosting your website to the top of SERPs for those certain specific terms. The more people reach out to your site the more authority you gain and the higher you rank and vise versa. The higher you rank, the higher authority your site gets. Organically rank websites are more trusted by people as compared to paid search websites like ads, for the knowledge they need. When it comes to paid searches, organic search beats them more than 65% of the time. Amazingly optimized pages prove the world about the authenticity of your content.
2. Cost nothing: Although we can spend a lot of money in optimizing our website for organic search. Tons of free reputable resources are available online to get us started with SEO. They also help our website to rise above in the competition. It can be time-consuming but worth it.
3. Top of Funnel clicks: Click-through rate is normally high for the sites that appear at the top of SERP.
4. Longevity: Organic search is a bonus that we receive regularly unlike paid search. If we continue to implement the best SEO tactics, we can make it to the top and continue to do so if our content fulfills Google’s needs. Once you are at the top it is easy to hang on there. Efforts of creating optimized content and SEO friendly content can pay off for a long time.

Cons

1. Time and Resources: Nothing in this world is free, everything comes with some price. Although SEO does not hit our pocket hard as paid searches do. However, there is a significant amount of time and resources needed to make it all go right. SEO is a time investing approach. It takes time to craft and implement content across our site. Many times it takes months to give fruitful results. You are not only the person in this business, but there are also many other competitors. Keywords are very competitive and you need to be fighting against other businesses by investing maximum time and resources to create high-quality content. You need to create SEO focused Content and proper techniques. Putting the required time and effort to achieve desired rank organically is something that certainly pays back itself, even though it takes a little longer than planned.

Paid Search Pros and Cons

What is much better than delivering your messages within a blink of an eye without much effort to the masses who are actively looking for what you offer? As I told you earlier nothing comes free in this world. Paid searches to have a lot of benefits. But to avail those benefits you have to pay some cost, something a significant cost. Paid searches are exceptionally fast, fair, and target audiences highly but are expensive and short lives. So the question arises what makes people come back again and again?

Pros

1. Faster and Easier: Developing evergreen SEO friend=dly content is very time-consuming. You have to wait and regularly update your content to climb up in the ranking system. It is a slow and labor-intensive process. For those you don’t have much time can opt for paid searches. This gets you in front of the new audience much quicker and easier. No doubt there is no other faster way to be at the top of SERP than with PPC. Following AdWords best practice can help you optimize your ads and develop a great website. If you have a big budget then you will be able to attract a large amount of audience who are willing to buy your product and services. Paid campaigns make it simpler to get off the floors as compared to organic searches. And certainly, require fewer resources. But requires a level of expertise to manage campaigns and prevent misspending of budget. Some aspects of paid search can be daunting, learning machine technology can make the process easy and much more accessible for small business and startups.
2. Targeted audience: As technology gets advance, there is sophistication in audience targeting all over the web. Although GDPR and privacy is still a major concern, targeting remains the vital aspect of digital marketing. Many marketing platforms offer tools which assist us in targeting specify an audience for us. These tools help you to target people who are much likely to click on your ads, get engages with your content, or even buy your product.
3. High Purchase Intent: Paid search presents you the opportunity to present your self in front of the people who have a high intent to make a purchase. When searchers are down at the funnel a relevant ad at the top tends to get large shares of click-through. But only if the keywords show that the problem of searcher can be solved quickly. Keyword research and testing are necessary to match the expectation of the audience and make your campaign a success. A well-planned campaign can result in a high-quality score and better visibility all over the search engines.

Cons

1. Cost and Longevity: Paid search is like a paid game, as long as you pay you can avail of its benefits. Moreover, depending on the competition you might need a large budget to compete in the bidding. However, the price for paid promotion of keywords depends on many factors such as broad vs exact match, brand vs nonbrand, etc. It might cost you thousands but in the end what matters the most in return on your investment. Even getting a penny back on our investment is worth it. Machine learning can be helpful to increase ROI.