A lot of people ask me what is better for their business, pay per click sponsored links or SEO. This is an area where it really depends on your business and your budget.

For those of you who don't know pay per click ads work like this: everyone enters bids on how much they are willing to bid for certain keywords. The person with the top bid is in the first slot and the next highest bid gets the next spot ect. The person with the top bid doesn't actually spend how much their bid is, they only pay a few cents more than the next highest bid. Whenever someone searches a keyword you are bidding on they will see a link to your site in the sponsored bids section. Whenever someone clicks on that link you get charged. This can become very expensive because it is open ended. You can set limits per day or only deposit limited funds into your account if you want but as soon as you hit your limit or your account runs out you are removed from the sponsored links. Also, sponsored links tend to get less traffic, usually about 10-20% of what the sites in the natural results get. Why? No one can say exactly why but there have been studies done and they have all shown that people tend to skip the sponsored links or use them last if they can't find what they want in the natural results.

Pay per click adveritising does have it's advantages. If you need results tomorrow then this is definitely the way to go. PPC can be a lot more flexible and is good for companies that have an off season. PPC is what it is. A quick solution. Traffic now. If that's what you need then it's the way to go.
On Thursday I'll go in to the pros and cons for hiring an SEO company. As always thank you for taking the time to read my post and if you have any questions feel free to send me an e-mail.