Since college I’ve rented apartments, houses, town homes, and I enjoy the flexibility it provides me. While most of my peers are taking their bite out of the American dream, and purchasing their first home, I’m enjoying the freedom from yard work, honey-do lists, and expensive appliance bills. I justify my non-equity building domicile because, I enjoy traveling, I like working, and I have little to no patience for raking.
This dichotomy between renter and homeowner is almost an exact parallel to the search marketing strategy between paid placement and organic placement. The paid placement tool is a quick, easy, and nimble strategy for driving keyword traffic from the first page of search results. And, if done correctly, this immediate traffic can turn into immediate sales. Providing a new business with the revenue needed. But, just like the rising rent prices, you can soon start to see your advertising costs skyrocket as too many competitors enter your keyword market. The value of the keyword is soon outstripped, and you find yourself downgrading to lower performing keywords, with leaky ceilings and no exercise room.
The digital version of the homeowner is the organically ranked website. These websites decided to save their advertising budgets under their mattress, and instead invested time into building content, researching keywords, and writing title tags. Now, after months/years of sitting at home on Friday nights, they sit proudly on the first listing of a high traffic search page. They receive large amounts of traffic daily and their cost of living on this search results page is low compared to their pay-per-click neighbors.
Just like every living situation, each of these choices comes down to the values of your business, budget, and your overall marketing strategy. Both paid placement and organic optimization drives targeted traffic, and provides a great deal of data about your online marketplace. A well rounded search marketing strategy would consist of both paid placement, and an organic optimization campaign, which would allow for even visibility on all industry keywords (broad & targeted keywords).
So in a nutshell, invest your advertising dollars wisely…buy a house, and rent a vacation home.