I am trying to figure out the best way to market a site I am developing for my contracting business. I know I never click on the paid advertising on the right side of gooogle but I also know that organic listin is hard to achieve and takes a long time. (Assuming I am correct) What are your thoughts on Organic results vs. Payperclick?

What can I expect to pay for both?

-T

Thanson... I am new as well and I can tell you that we have tried PPC advertising and our experience with this form of internet marketing was not really worth it to us. The traffic we had generated from our CPC campaigns was very bouncy, and so our conversion was lower than we earned the traffic from organic resources. So, while this is not a marketing report or research report, this has been the experience of our little company.

I have heard studies that claim that as much as 85% of internet traffic will not even so much as look at sponsored links, ads or sites. I don't how reliable that is, but I did see this by the Forrester Research Group.

I hope I have helped somehow.

Bettie, I thought you were "new" to the SEO world. This is a fantastic reply, I could not agree more. Although, I think for the company that is looking to obtain immediate results, and they do not have the time to wait for organic results, PPC serves a purpose. Why not go ahead and get your company on the 1st page immediately while you work on your search engine optimization campaign?

When we had started our site, we initially began using PPC and then eventually left it behind as we were able to start achieving organic listings.

I can tell you from personal experience that pay per click has become a "big boys" game over the last several years. When I started in affiliate marketing it was affordable and a great way to promote affiliate links and sites. Now with everyone becoming more internet savvy, I am finding that the bids are becoming more and more expensive. The ROI on PPC has become less because of the expense to place the ad. This is exactly why I think that SEO is a much better way to compete. Granted, I understand that SEO will be more time consuming than my previous efforts with PPC, at the end of the day though I strongly believe that I will have a more profitable and stable business for it.

Believe it or not, over 60% of search users have never clicked on a sponsored link, so by that figure by only doing PPC you are missing out on a huge chunk of the internet audience.

What I have tended to do in the past is use PPC on new campaigns whilst they are getting off the ground, and then slowly withdrawing the bids as the organic results kick in.

Hope this helps?

Cheers
Ian

eSoftware Solutions
UK SEO Company

WOW, thanks for all the great responses... I didn't think i'd have gotten any so quickly. From the responses here, sounds like I should focus my time on "Organic" results not the paid listings.

Thanks