This week, we're taking a look at pay per click advertising and search engine optimization. What is better to promote your site? Should you use both?

In the news: Yahoo! launches smart ads, and the Google AdSense ad order has been revealed.

Table of contents:

• Facts of the week
• Search engine news of the week
• Articles of the week
• Recommended resources
• Previous articles

Many webmasters are unsure whether they should advertise their website with SEO (search engine optimization) or PPC (pay per click advertising).

Actually, most commercial websites work best if you use both SEO and PPC. The exact mix depends on your goals.

Pay per click advertising (PPC)

Advantages:

• You get instant results. If you advertise your website on pay per click search engines, then you will get traffic now and not several months later.
• PPC ads are perfect for time limited offers such as holiday sales.
• You can stop PPC ads at any time.
• PPC ads make it easy to test different keywords and landing pages.
• PPC ads also work with websites that are not very well designed and wouldn't get good search engine rankings.
• PPC ads allow you to bid on a large amount of keywords, including misspellings and other keyword variations that you cannot put on your web pages.

Disadvantages:

• PPC advertising can become very expensive if you bid on the wrong keywords or if you don't calculate the maximum bid price correctly.
• Click fraud can be a problem. Not all clickers are potential customers.

If you advertise your website with PPC ads then you should use a ROI tracking tool to make sure that you don't waste your money.

Search engine optimization (SEO):

Advantages:

• Traffic through organic search engine results is almost free if the up-front work has been done.
• After optimizing your website you can use your money for different things and the optimized site will still run.
• A larger number of visitors and search result clickers is not a problem.
• Search engine optimization delivers long term results that don't require permanent financial input.

Disadvantages:

• SEO can be relatively time-consuming up-front.
• SEO can require a redesign of your web pages to make your website search engine friendly. However, this usually also results in a better user experience.

Search engine optimization delivers lasting results and it costs considerably less in the long term. However, you must make sure that you optimize your website correctly, if your want to get high search engine rankings.

Pay per click advertising and search engine optimization both contribute to the success of your website. If you use both wisely, you can get many new visitors and customers without spending a fortune. See the recommended resources below for PPC and SEO software tips.

"If a user is browsing for hybrid cars in Yahoo! Autos and has selected San Francisco as their default location in Yahoo! Weather, Yahoo's SmartAds platform [shows] local dealer information and current lease rates [...] and allows the marketer to reach a user who is likely to become a customer."

Editor's note: Here's the Yahoo! Smart Ads page.

Google AdSense employee: "I can confirm that in the general ad auction, our system will target the highest-paying ads to the ad unit implemented first in your HTML, working down through the auction results to fill in the rest of your ad units in order."

"The present invention provides methods and systems for using a janitor to process facts extracted from the Word Wide Web. [...] For example, a web page can list a series of presidents in a first column of a table and list their dates of births in another column."

Search engine newslets

• Branding matters for SEO.
• That 25% new queries figure? Ballpark estimate, says Google.
• Frustration over Google URL removal tool.
• Google finally acquired GrandCentral Communications.
• Google News: Image version.
• Google sued in UK over defamatory postings in search results.
• Google AdWords tips: Not seeing your ad on Google.com?
• Yahoo hires ethics chief officer.
• Start-ups make inroads with Google's work force.
• Apple iPhone craze: a search volume look.
• Local.com granted local search patent.
• Whac-A-Matt (cartoon).

"It appears AdSense units are designed for accidental clicks — or at least not designed for no accidental clicks. [...] It seems to me this is being done in their best interest and at the same time ripping off a lot of advertisers who choose to show their ads in the AdSense network."

"I was in London last night right smack in the area where a large bomb was defused this morning. [...] Both Google and Ask.com in particular have promised that their new search interfaces should naturally get us relevant news information. Both failed [...]"

"Many small and midsize e-tailers are finding it hard to rely on Google's goodwill in order to survive. [...] What if all of our revenue was dependent on Google's latest codings?"

Pay per click and search engine optimization software tips

• AxROI: AxROI tracks the return on investment of your online ads. It works with Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing and all other online ads.
  
  AxROI also tracks the effectiveness of organic search engine listings, i.e. you'll find out how many visitors you get through a special search term on Google and how many of these people buy something on your site.
  
  
• IBP: IBP is the complete search engine optimization solution. IBP helps you to optimize your web pages, it helps you to get good inbound links, it submits your website to search engines, it checks the position of your web pages on search engines and much more.

"IBP helped me to get a PR6 and page 1 rankings on Google."

"My name is Neil Ebsworth and I manage Amlaspain.com. I came across IBP early in my internet career as I started to manage the SEO for the AMLASpain website.

In just twelve months IBP has been an enormous help with every aspect of my work and has helped take my web site to not only a PR6 ranked site, but also to page 1 of Google for our major target keyword markets."
Neil Ebsworth, Spanish property

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