Organic SEO vs Paid Inclusion Methods

[Daria_Goetsch]

What are your experiences with Organic optimization vs Paid Inclusion? What are the positives and negatives of each method?

[rustybrick]

Rankings are exactly the same, or at least they should be the same. As you know, paid inclusion is paying to ensure your pages are included in the organic results. If those pages are not optimized for search engines then they will rank as poorly as any other Web page.

If you have a very complex URL structure, and the spiders are not able to index your site well, then paid inclusion offers that advantage. They also sometimes offer 48 refresh rates, so you can expect changes to your pages to be updated in the search engine's index really quickly as opposed to not paying for inclusion.

I personally do not use paid inclusion unless the client needs in the index right away.

[David Wallace]

Regarding Yahoo's paid inclusion program, I currently do not see any need for it unless one has a massive product database that isn't that "spider friendly" and in this case, trusted feed would be a good alternative as opposed to hoping Yahoo will find all the pages on its own.

Regarding Teoma, the benefit of using the PFI is that Teoma can be very slow to find changes in a site and update its index. Therefore if one does not have the patience for it, paid inclusion will get your pages with their current content indexed quickly.

However with most sites I work with, I always wait to see if Yahoo and Teoma will find the pages on their own before shelling out inclusion fees and in the case of Yahoo, PPC fees as well.

[AussieWebmaster]

They really must be having a hard time selling this...
they may have tried to get some of the former LookSmart people who had some training on how to sell and how the system works...

It will eventually go the way of LookSmart when they realize the man hours and resources could be more profitably put to other uses... like trying to brand the Life Engine approach.

[Kal]

Personally, I found paid inc useful only as a way to get client sites listed quickly. I found no benefit in terms of traffic and if I was patient enough, the client site usually showed up via free inclusion eventually. The AskJeeves paid inc program I've found atrocious - either inclusion didn't eventuate and I've had to chase them up or I get error messages saying the URL is "unacceptable" when it meets all their criteria :rolleyes:

Haven't tried Site Match yet and don't intend to. Anyone here tried it and have feedback?

[AussieWebmaster]

Personally, I found paid inc useful only as a way to get client sites listed quickly. I found no benefit in terms of traffic and if I was patient enough, the client site usually showed up via free inclusion eventually. The AskJeeves paid inc program I've found atrocious - either inclusion didn't eventuate and I've had to chase them up or I get error messages saying the URL is "unacceptable" when it meets all their criteria :rolleyes:

Haven't tried Site Match yet and don't intend to. Anyone here tried it and have feedback?


What is really bad about the Site Match offering is that once you pull it down, down comes the URL so you have to keep it there or start at the beginning which you may as well do from the beginning or get a link from somewhere that will speed the inclusion without the continuing PPC bill.

[ShootinBlanks]

The site-match system would be a great idea if the engine wasn't so dumb about what it sees as a 'match'. I applaud the concept, but condemn the implementation.

Just my two cents...

[Anthony Parsons]

I only use PPC to get new sites going whilst waiting for listing to take hold and for competitive terms that may take 6 months and more, again, until the desired ranking takes hold. I put down a PPC account for my own site, which was nothing more than a waste of money IMO.

PPC like everything has its uses IMO. If you wanted to be seen for "Web Design" or "webdesign", or something like that, you would use PPC as to gain those ranking organically will take years. With a minimum monthly spend through Overture, it isn't even worth having it for obscure terms that you just couldn't be bothered targeting on your pages, mispellings, etc.

Yuk

[Rob]

I think there are many instances when paid is a better alternative. Personally, I'd prefer organic as it is much cheaper, but there are cases when a properly targeted paid campaign yields much higher ROI. All depends on what words you bid on as you need to get people who are ready to buy and not those simply doing research.

Organic results are great for research purposes and will generally lead to converted visitors, but you can have a greater impact on sales if you know who your customers are and can target your ads accordingly.

[seobook]

I have noticed the ask jeeves to be a bit skidish sometimes too, changing indexing status back and forth a decent # of times for the few URLs I have added.

I think Site Match is usually for people in a rush or with tons of money to blow. From a marketing standpoint incremental cpc guarantees that they will probably have relevant ads, but it is not a business model that works for all sites.

[mcanerin]

I find it more satisfying to get good rankings due to pure organic SEO, but when you are dealing with a client you pretty much have to check the ego at the door and use whatever it takes (legitimately) to do the job - like buying links and listings instead of waiting for them to come in due to all the great content :( (not to mention the fact that clients are usually not willing to wait a year or so for results)

It's just not as much fun! LOL

[AussieWebmaster]

I find it more satisfying to get good rankings due to pure organic SEO, but when you are dealing with a client you pretty much have to check the ego at the door and use whatever it takes (legitimately) to do the job - like buying links and listings instead of waiting for them to come in due to all the great content :( (not to mention the fact that clients are usually not willing to wait a year or so for results)

It's just not as much fun! LOL

I would use PFI and set up other pages with slightly different content and let them float into free results and then do a 301 redirect of the PFI pages to them and let them die out after a year.

[Nacho]

Organic is the way to go for me as first option. However, for those pages where I can't get the spider to come back on a frequent basis and would need a constant refresh, then PFI would be the way to go, until I can get those spiders well trained.Hopefully spiders will like to be more hungry for food than for money, but that will depend on it's trainers I guess.

Rapid incusion on the index, on the other hand, is also well requested by some clients that can't wait for "the process" as mentioned by Kal, so thank goodness for PFI. However, link building usually takes it's time as well, so clients need to learn the virtue of PATIENCE one way or another.

[Mel]

If you are including trusted feeds as paid inclusion, then there seem to be some ranking advantages to be had in addition to the speed of inclusion.

I can see a scenario where you use organic for most of the engines and terms but trusted feeds for those terms which are very competitive.

But this still means we have to optimize for Google.

[AussieWebmaster]

If you are including trusted feeds as paid inclusion, then there seem to be some ranking advantages to be had in addition to the speed of inclusion.

I can see a scenario where you use organic for most of the engines and terms but trusted feeds for those terms which are very competitive.

But this still means we have to optimize for Google.

Always have to optimize for Google...lol

PPC is going to be around for awhile... so long as people can have a positive ROI they will buy them...
Obviously in certain areas the wall gets hit quickly and only the novice thinking they can get better numbers... or are just so unimformed that they spend for awhile and then see the error of their ways...

Certain things may not work with PPC... or the price drops down to acceptable and profitable numbers for both the buyer and the seller