Depending on who you speak to, some people will entice you with the ‘dark art’ of obtaining quality visitors through Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Others will say that paid search in the right hands is like watching a skilled surgeon at work. Others may say that getting a life should be a high priority for the first two groups. 

Fortunately, I get paid for doing both so I have no axe to grind! In my opinion, both are useful and complementary: paid search is quick and precise, SEO takes longer but you are building inherent value into your website. Here’s my extended list :

• Speed and control.  Sometimes I’m impatient (or my client is). It might be an immediate business requirement such a bad quarter or a product launch. Perfect for paid search as it’s rapid: a new campaign or new keyword(s) can be up and running in any location around the world in about 15 mins. SEO is the medium/long-term game; it requires planning and application of SEO best-practices throughout the website (on-page) and externally (off-page link-building). Once these changes are made, you’re in the hands of the gods (search engines to you).
• Keyword inventory. With SEO it makes sense to focus on your primary and secondary keywords. Trying to get all the keywords known to man crammed into your site is not good for your brand, your business or your visitors. Paid search keyword inventory does not need to restricted in this way so it can include long-tail keywords that are low volume but high conversion.
• Message rotation. Good online marketing is all about testing and measurement. Rotation of messages (ie advert copy) in paid search is a powerful feature allowing comparative performance of creative. New adverts can be posted within minutes. By comparison, the organic search results equivalent is the meta description – the snippet of page information that apears in the search listing – this is more difficult to change and needs the search engines to update their indexes to take effect.
• Reach. Through contextual advertising eg Google’s AdSense, you have access to an additional audience: visitors on the content network (i.e. 3rd party websites showing adverts). This contextual advertising network is good for branding and can yield very high conversion rates from information-led surfers (with the right offer of course).
• Cost. SEO should be a relatively fixed cost whereas paid search can be variable. Paid search budgets can be set but it’s a keyword auction. If the competition raises its bids, you must do so if you wish to maintain your position. If your paid search budgets are cut, so is your traffic!
• Target your competitors.  Earlier in 2008, Google relaxed its UK regulations to allow paid search advertisers to bid on competitor brand terms and trademarks in the UK providing these terms do not appear in the advert copy. This type of tactical marketing cannot ethically be delivered by SEO. Seen as just another way for Google to get revenue (which it is!), in my experience, it can be good for branding and the cost can be quite reasonable.
• Visitor preference. There are certain businesses/organisations/markets, where an organic search listing may be preferred by searchers. If you’re looking to buy a product online, you might lean towards clicking on an advert but what if you’re looking for information on a medical condition or doing some background research early in your purchase cycle?
• Paid search can make your SEO better. This is my favourite: the performance data you can get from paid search can help take your SEO to another level. Keyword tools can only take you so far; they are, at best, estimates and they cannot tell you which keywords will convert.  With paid search performance and conversion data, you’ll know with much greater confidence which keywords to feed into your SEO efforts.

So what do you think?