by Gourab Modak

Created on: April 03, 2010

With the advent of paid search engine listings, the world of search engine marketing was turned upside down. At first, free, organic search engine traffic was the best way to get traffic to your website. Every website owner and web master tried hard to make their website more optimized for search engines than their competition. When paid search results were invented, they shifted the focus of search engine marketing from content creation to a world of auctioning. However, paid search engine listings and organic search engine listings still have advantages and disadvantages that make them unique.

Paid search engine listings have one unique disadvantage that not everyone can afford: money. Paid search listings are (in a nutshell) advertisements. Search engines like Google sell positions on search engine listings that are places where the user’s eyes naturally tend to go. These usually hold a higher priority than organic search results. This is why they also hold a high price tag in the eyes of search engines. Of course, they aren’t a lot of money, and in fact, these slots go for as little as ten cents per click for unpopular keywords. On average, they go for somewhere between two to five dollars per click. However, since you have to pay on a per-click basis, you need to be very careful using this method to bring in search engine traffic.

Organic search listings, on the other hand, are for everyone. However, while every webpage submitted to a particular search engine has a place in the search engine listings, not all of the positions are good. There is a lot of competition involved in getting good organic search engine positions. Usually, only the first two pages of search listings are the ones people actually care about. However, optimizing your website for search engines is really easy (though it takes a long time). If you can create a lot of content, constantly supply it to your website, and get traffic to your website from other sources, your website will prosper in the eyes of search engines.

As a web site owner or web master, you can use search engines in two ways for getting traffic for your web site. You can either utilize paid search engine listings, or use search engine optimization techniques to get traffic to your website. However, both ways involve a lot of research and work in order to achieve success. But after using these techniques the right way, you can expect a lot of success.

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