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| Here, we demonstrate the mutually beneficial relationship between SEO and Paid Search. It's best to have a balanced approach to Internet marketing, and you'll quickly see that Paid Search is a highly effective way to jumpstart your site in the world of search. However, as more of your pages get ranked through SEO, you'll be able to lower your overall dependence on Paid Search. |
 Non-Paid Search & Paid Search 
Search Engine Optimization (SEO), also called Non-Paid search (Organic), improves the rankings of your site's pages listed in the "organic" search engine results. When a searcher comes across your listing and clicks on it, you will not pay for that click. Hence, the key to long term visibility for your brand lies in quality SEO.
There's front-end and back-end optimization of your website that needs to be done before you can see concrete, measurable results. It's imperative that you do ethical, white hat SEO because this is what's best for your site users and for search engine robots.
Your business should be transparent and aim for high rankings based on ethical business principles and sound strategies. SEO has nothing to do with tricking the search engines...currently, the algorithms for the Big Four search suppliers (Google, Yahoo!, Ask, and Microsoft's Live) are way too sophisticated as they evaluate how your site is coded, optimized, and perceived by others. So, black hat SEO, buying links from link farms, or any other questionable practices will only put your business in jeopardy of being penalized by the search engines.
That covers a brief intro to Non-Paid Search but you also need a heads up on Paid Search. The term Paid Search also pertains to Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising and Sponsored Listings. Let's say that you're just launching your site and you seriously need to create a buzz about it on the Web. Well, Paid Search is the most viable option in the short term to create business for you immediately.
You can run PPC ads through Google Adwords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, and/or Microsoft adCenter. If you're on a tight budget and you need to pick just one, run your ads through Google because they command the lion's share of search traffic anyway. According to Hitwise intelligence, Google received 67.9 % of all U.S. searches in the four weeks ending April 26, 2008 whereas Yahoo! Search, MSN Search, and Ask.com brought in only 20.28%, 6.26%, and 4.17% respectively.
By running your Paid Search ads, you'll get highly useful feedback and have an amazing degree of control over your campaign. You can pinpoint your ads to only show in certain geographical locations, you can do demographic targeting, get your ads to show only when searchers use particular keywords that you specify, and then you can analyze these clicks and look at visitor trends for your website (through Google Analytics).
Paid Search is a very economical marketing technique IF you know how to do it properly. Targeted traffic through Paid Search leads to more visitors who spend more time clicking and reading through your pages thereby increasing your search engine rankings. And optimized web pages can improve your ad's positioning while at the same time lowering the amount you pay for each click. In essence, this is SEO-Paid Search Mutualism and now you can see why we've coined the term as such.
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