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Pay Per Click vs. Organic Search

If you are contemplating boosting traffic to your web site and therefore sales in your business, the first question you need to ask yourself is whether you should use organic search or pay per click.

First let's define the terms. Pay Per Click (PPC) is an advertising campaign where you pay the search engine (such as Google - their PPC is called AdWords) to show your ads when people search for key words. Organic Search is where you either do the work or pay a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) company to get you ranked high in Google's non-paid listings.

There are THREE key differences between PPC and Organic Search:

• 1. In a PPC Campaign, you can create a campaign and be getting results quite literally within minutes. At Google it can be as simple as creating an account (1 - 2 minutes), creating a campaign (and giving your credit card information) in 2 - 3 minutes and then monitoring as you start to get click thrus to your web site. An organic campaign, on the other hand, takes more preparation as you make changes to pages throughout your web site and the results take longer as well. Depending on the site and the content, results can take as long as several weeks.
• 2. One of the reasons an SEO campaign takes more work is because you don't have control over which page the search engine will link to so you have to make sure all of your pages are both optimized and linked in such a way that people can get to the page they want even if they click a search engine link that takes them to a page you didn't intend them to go to. With a PPC campaign, you get to tell the search engine EXACTLY what page to link to so you can just focus on that one page and focus on the marketing content of that page.
• 3. The third key difference is that, according to SEOmoz, people searching on the Internet are 8.5 times more likely to click on an organic search listing than on a paid ad.

Some of the trade-offs then are between SEO which over the long term is likely to have a bigger pay off vs. a paid search campaign which can have an immediate impact on your bottom line and having a very focused ad in paid search vs. needing to continually focus on the whole web site in organic search.

Understanding Social Media

Social Media: What is it?

One of the biggest "buzzes" in the internet right now is Social Media. But what is this phenomenon known as social media? It's simple really.

When the Internet was in its infancy, web pages were pretty much static. That is, they didn't change. The code on the page was hard coded and everyone who came to visit saw the same thing. The media of the day decried that the Internet would just drive us each into our own worlds, drive us away from each other.

Then people began to see how databases could be harnessed to provide live data and even to interact with each other. Larger businesses began to provide database connectivity to share information with their customers and visitors. People found this to be very useful and started to get more "into" it.

Then the Internet left its infancy. I would say it is still in its adolescence but at this time it is changing and growing in all kinds of unexpected ways. The naysayers often say a new technology is going to drive us away from each other but there is a deep need in every human to connect with others.

Social Media web sites provide this kind of connection. MySpace was the first social oriented web site to grab the attention of pretty much the whole Internet. While it still is an important site that is used by a wide variety of people, it is viewed by many to be the site where garage bands and their groupies meet. This, by the way is inaccurate as the average age of users in the mid 30's.

A site that has really captured the attention of people young and old is Facebook. Facebook started as a way for college students to connect and get to know one another but rapidly moved from college to high school to anyone over the age of 13. It is now used by people all over to engage in both fun and business. This election season there were all kinds of groups created by people who favor one candidate over another, one issue over another or one cause over another.

I even spent the better part of an hour this afternoon catching up with an old friend who created a Facebook account and happened to be on Facebook at the same time I was - yes there is a chat feature on Facebook that lets people communicate in real time. I've also connected with an old flame from college - just to touch base mind you, and reconnected with some high school friends.

But Facebook is more than a social network. It is also a way to find partners, employees, work and customers. As a technology professional, I belong to a couple of networks through Facebook that are specifically for technology and entrepreneurs. One of the nicest parts about the web is that we aren't limited by geography. I can connect with people in Asia, Europe, California, across town or just down the street.

Another very useful social networking site is LinkedIn. LinkedIn is designed for business. Business people sign up for an account and can connect with other business people. The LinkedIn concept is based on the premise that if I have, for example, 30 contacts in my network and each of my contacts also has around 30 people in their network, I suddenly have access to 900 people and that is just within one degree or one contact away. Move out two or three more degrees and you find yourself with 1000s of people within your network and it only takes an invitation or introduction to find the person you want to contact.

As social media has grown up, Facebook has morphed into an application that lets you do business, have fun, or get involved. And LinkedIn has grown into an application that lets you connect with classmates from long ago (or right now) and get involved in affinity groups not having anything to do with business.

Businesses and individuals alike should look into how they can leverage social media networks to improve their business or expand their prospects.

Happy Holidays from all of us at EduCyber!

© 2008 EduCyber, Inc. This newsletter is brought to you by EduCyber, Inc. EduNotes can be viewed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week online at www.educyber.com/edunotes . Visit us on the web at http://www.educyber.com or call us at (303) 268-2245. Permission is hereby granted to redistribute all or part of this newsletter as long as this entire copyright message is included.