The question of whether or not the PPC (commonly referred to as pay-per-click) can benefit a business has been a widely discussed topic throughout the information technology, network marketing, affiliate advertising and general sociological spheres of society. A lot of people have been asking if search engine optimization actually works, as a lot of disenchanted website owners have recently stated that SEO has not lived up to their expectations.

The key point to note about search engine optimization is that it is not the same for every particular market niche on the internet. When SEO first started, the industry was still fairly new and SEO was relatively undiscovered. As more and more people – particularly internet marketers – came across search engine optimization and how they could tweak SEO to boost their website rankings, a lot of companies started to expect instant results and see page one rankings from the off. However, when approved, white hat SEO methods are used to boost rankings, business should expect this process to be gradual.

The rather alarming statistic to note that a staggering 35% of business owners do not fully understand just how much search engine optimization can benefit their business. Whether it be SEO in Sydney, SEO in Birmingham or SEO in China, every business can see benefits from an effective search engine optimization campaign.

Whilst PPC (or pay-per-click) is the only sure fire way to guarantee page one results overnight by identifying specific keywords that a business wishes to target, a company can put a pay-per-click campaign in place, ensuring they appear on the first page when a search is made on Google for a specific term. However, the fundamental component of PPC is proper, white hat search engine optimisation, both on-site and off-site. For a high quality score on Adwords for each individual advert, it is imperative that your on-site content is valued, relevant, and has the correct proportion of keywords included. Google will take into account the structure of your site (layout, robots.txt file, xml sitemap), headings, title, meta and image alt tags, and all other content throughout the entire site.

Furthermore, Google will take into account how your site organically ranks for the chosen key terms when deciding on placement of paid ads. This makes sense because if your site has no quality material but you have plenty of finance to inject, you could in theory attempt to ‘buy’ that top spot by bidding a very high amount for that particular market, regardless of content. Google will however, recognize this when matching your ad and penalize as necessary.

Images: Nando Arruda – CC BY 2.0