Organic Ranking (SEO) vs. Sponsored ads (PPC); How to choose?
- Speed: organic ranking can take up to 12 months; sponsored ranking only takes 24 hours;
- Range: organic ranking is only possible for 10-15 keywords; sponsored ranking is possible for thousands of keywords;
- Stability: organic rankings can drop overnight with search algorithm changes; sponsored rankings are guaranteed stable;
- Cost: organic rankings are free; sponsored rankings are paid per click, and can suffer from click fraud;
- Targeting: sponsored rankings can be shown per time of day or per geographic region; organic rankings cannot
- Media: sponsored ads can show rich media like banners and video ads, organic rankings basically only show text (though this is changing with google universal).
- Audience: organic rankings are shown to all people, sponsored ads can be targeted per website (adsense style) and audience demographics (gender, age, income group).