Promoting a website

When promoting a website you need to think about how you want to do it, do you want to pay for the traffic or do you want to get it directly through the search engines by utilising the organic search engine rankings.

Both solutions have there advantages and disadvantages.

Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising

The advantages of PPC

• It is fast – you can set up an ad campaign and it can be delivering you traffic within a hour or two.

 

• Targeted traffic – You choose the terms you are found for and that way you know that the visitors you get are all targeted to your product or service.

 

• You set your budget – You can decide in advance how much you pay for a term and how much you spend overall.

 

• Geo targeting – You can choose what countries and regions to advertise too.

The disadvantages of PPC

• Cost – It can be expensive if you do not set a budget or if you choose the wrong phrases then you can spend a lot of money quickly.

 

• There is a lot to learn – To get the most from your pay Per Click campaign you need to understand how to test and track results.

 

• Click Fraud – This is more of an issue with some networks than others and in some business sectors but there have been cases of people clicking on ads to either generate revenue for themselves or to deplete the budget of a rival company.

 

The organic listings

The advantages of the organic listings

• No cost – The organic listings are often referred to as the free listings.

 

• Targeted traffic – By using good Search Engine Optimisation or SEO techniques you can target specific words or phrases to get found in the search engines for.

 

• Multiple listings- Often when you optimise for one term on a site you are able to rank well for a number of other terms at the same time.

 

• More clicks – More people click on the organic listings than click on the PPC listings so if you show up well in the organic listings you will get more traffic.

 

• More credibility – If you rank well in the organic listings you are often considered by visitors to have more credibility than those that are seen to have just paid for their positions, this can result in dramatically increased conversion rates.

 

The disadvantages of the organic listings

• Time – The only real disadvantage of using good SEO practices to get ranked better in the search engines is that it can take time to show for competitive phrases.

 

I hope you can see that Search Engine Optimisation or SEO is a vital component of your marketing and website strategy.