SEO is done on websites mainly to market them. SEO is an art to rank high in the SERPs. It is like an art where there is a big mix of writing skills, programming skills and talent in linking strategies. Hiring people to work for an in-house SEO team or outsourcing SEO to a freelance SEO person or to an SEO company, may cost money.

PPC on the other hand simply paying search engines to display your websites links in the SERPs sponsored results or also called paid listings. Here you pay for every click is made by a person going to your website. And hopefully that traffic will generate into a lead or sale in order to get an ROI on advertising cost. This is a bidding type of system where certain keyphrases are bid on and the highest bidder get the highest position within the sponsored results. This can also be very costly as sometimes your target keyphrases may be in a bidding war with your main competition in the industry.

Although there are many techniques as well to minimize cost in PPC and maximize the benefits. PPC is a whole different art compared to organic SEO. And I have heard from some hardcore SEO people that 4 out of 5 people click on organic results. It is only 1 out of 5 that click on sponsored results. But also in several other studies of Internet consumers, many of the buyers do not even know what is a paid sponsored listing and what is an organic results.

For me, I believe the truth neither one is better than the other. It is really a case-to-case basis. in some websites organic search results help you convert very well, and in other websites, it is PPC. This is where you need to pay attention to the numbers. Look at the stats, and study them well to determine which method gives you more profit and adjust your time and effort and budget accordingly to maximize profits with your online marketing campaign.

PPC does not replace SEO. And SEO does not replace PPC. Both are good online marketing methods and they are designed to help each other.

To learn more about PPC and SEO, a good place to start with Aaron Wall’s SEO Book and the PPCBook Boris and Eugene Mordkovich. Novice Internet marketers will not get lost in the language discussed in these books and advanced Internet marketers will still appreciate the amount of information available in these books. They are absolutely worth checking out.

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