Search Engine Advertising & Optimization

Paid Advertising and Marketing

The term PPC stands for 'Pay Per Click' and is a form of paid advertising on the Internet. It is predominantly done on search engines but more and more social platforms (Facebook & Twitter are examples), as well as popular niche related websites, are using this revenue generating model.

It allows advertisers to display their ad and only pay when somebody clicks on the advertisment – Google is a medium that many advertisers use to promote their website products or services and Google brings in billions of dollars each year from these activities.

Another term that PPC advertising falls under is SEM, which stands for 'Search Engine Marketing' and includes marketing through multiple mediums such as displaying adverts, banner adverts, email newsletter adverts and more via your chosen websites.
You may even have the option of only paying for the nuber of users that view your advert (which is called CPM and stands for 'Cost Per a thousand impressions') or click on it.

When advertising on search engines, the way they select whether or not your ad shows up is based on how relevant your website is to the terms or phrases that search engine users type in.
An example of how this works would be if you tried advertising your tyre shop when people search for coffee shops - in this case your ad would not be displayed because it's not relevant to what users searched for (keep in mind that your site could show up but you'd be paying exorbitantly high fees for each click).

Search Engine Optimization

The above methods are paid methods of advertising but 'Search Engine Optimization' is seen as a long-term strategy that is not paid for (depending on how you go about implementing it).

If you use a professional marketer/agency then you will obviously have to pay them a fee but it is quite possible to do it yourself, provided you're well versed in what you're doing (otherwise, things could take a turn for the worse).

Search engine optimization is the process of optimizing your website so that it ranks as high as possible on search engine result pages (the goal is to aim for the first position).
The way that your website is ranked is based on a huge number of factors but some of the key influencers include great user content, backlinks to your website as well as a properly designed website that's free of error.

Some SEO providers charge substantian amounts as well as design your website to rank well, while others charge less but don't provide the results they promised.

Clients can never really tell who is good or bad but the only possible indication of a good provider is one that has kept your website in the top positions for a prolonged period of time, usually more than six months (as there are companies out there that use unethical practices and this could end up getting your website banned).
The trick is to find an awesome website design company (in Cape Town, we like to think that's us) and a great marketer while balancing the costs between what you're attempting to achieve.

The benefit of paid marketing is that it allows you to evaluate your market much quicker and potentially get results quicker (if everything is implemented correctly by the appropriate people).

Getting your website optimized for search engines is seen as a long-term growth strategy that could provide substantial results well into the future and decrease your paid marketing efforts. Webmasters need to consider the positives as well as negatives of each option and possibly strike a balance between the two for optimal results.