Basic guide to seo and ppc advertising

The online community is definitely a large market place that you should not ignore, especially if you have an internet business. There are literally millions of potential customers out there in cyberspace.

At the same time, the internet also poses a quite different challenge. The easy access that internet provides also gives you as much competition as you can imagine. It is too crowded and congested.

Having a website is not enough to make your business run and able to compete. You must take other alternatives to for the online community to access your website at any rate or chance possible.

You have to expose your website. Make it known. It has to be visible. It has to be frequently targeted by consumers and surfers.

Invest in marketing your internet site. There are basically two options available to you, SEO and PPC. These two are probably the most desirable alternatives you can get for your internet business as strategy for search engine marketing.

1. SEO

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Some researches indicate that roughly 70% of internet surfers utilize the Google search engine to find and locate web sites and pages. SEO is the process taken to make sure that the internet users will find your website when ranked among the top results of a search. This way you can make sure that you will be visible and can clearly stand out from the rest.

To get search engine optimization, you will have to place frequently hit internet links to web sites, that hopefully will link back to you as well, commonly known as backlinking.

In SEO there is no need for you to pay for the clicks although it will require you to spend time doing research to get a favorable combination of ads and target audience. The SEO process is a long term one. It requires months, 6 months at the least, before the proper outcome is fully achieved, but once the goal is accomplished, you will definitely have a steady source of profit.

2. PPC

PPC means Pay Per Click, which is advertising on a search engine. These are sponsored listings that you see whenever you make a search. There will be a charge whenever a visitor or web surfer clicks on any of your ads. There will first be a bidding process. The highest bidder for the price per click will usually get the chance to be first listed in the search results.

With this kind of advertising you can tightly control your campaign as you get to create your own ad. You will also manage the target audience and still stay within the bounds of your budget. Most of the providers of PPC advertising will allow you to specify the target market, either by topic, industry or geographical location. You can also check if your ad gets to be shown at all and if it is competitive with the rest.

PPC lets you advertise to the entire online community. It is also relatively easy to set up.

You just set a budget for a certain period. The moment your budget has been used up by the target number of clicks, your ads will no longer be displayed until the next period that you want it displayed again.

You will also be able to adjust swiftly to changes in market demands and trends.

In deciding which of the two strategies will work for you, think of your goals and of your resources. The better way to approach the two is to evaluate according to your short term and long term plans. Take the PPC course for your short term goals and choose SEO if you have long term ones.