Benefits of Tapping Both Organic Listings and Paid Listings

By Cheow Yu Yuan

A lot of companies and individuals think that by just having paid listings such as pay-per-click advertisements on search engines, they will not need to have good organic listings for their websites.

Recently I have heard a lot of sayings that websites who advertise through pay-per-clicks are considered more legitimate businesses, when compared to those that have prominent rankings on organic listings as they are usually considered content websites for researching purposes by searchers. I seriously do not agree with them.

I have seen very profitable businesses apply search engine optimization to their website and rank well on search engine organic listings. These companies are legitimate businesses providing services and products as they know the importance of ranking well on organic listings.

You see, the fact still stands that websites which are listing well on organic listings generate a higher click through rate when compared to websites on the Sponsored Links area.

Be it organic listings or paid listings, the purpose of both methods is to tap on the high and quality traffic from search engines, so as to generate either more leads or sales for your business. Therefore, it makes perfect sense that if there is a chance to get prominent organic listings, you should grab this opportunity so as to capture more quality traffic and leads.

Today, we are no longer residing in the information age anymore. We are in the recommendation age. Search engines, blog, social networking sites are all great and reputable recommendators. If you are listed on the top 3 organic positions on reputable search engines like Google and Yahoo!, it is considered that Google and Yahoo! recommend your website to searchers who are searching for your products or services. This will definitely add more weights to your business.

I personally feel that search engine optimization and pay-per-click should be applied together. A website should ranks well on organic listings, with its core keywords summing up what business it is in. Then pay-per-click can come in to target more diversified keywords targeting individual products or services. In this way, both organic listings and paid listings will definitely compliment one another.

You do not need to sell something directly online from your website in order to make full use of organic and paid listings. You can use these channels to generate more leads by having them to sign up for your newsletter or filling up enquiry form. Then you can do follow-ups with these prospects and close any deal through either face-to-face meetings or phone calls.

Cheow Yu Yuan is the co-founder of HomeBizGears.com

Check out more about Search Engine Optimization at http://www.homebizgears.com/search-engine-optimization.asp

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