Organic Search vs. AdWords

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The diagram below shows a typical results page from a Google search. The area contained by dashed lines is where the "Sponsored Links" or the "AdWords" are shown. The rest of the page is taken up by the "organic" search results.

The difference between organic search results and AdWords

So what's the difference? The "organic" search results are links to the websites that Google consider the most relevent to the words searched for, the AdWord results are the adverts of companies who have paid to be displayed when those words are searched for.

So if you have a website there are two ways you can get on the first page of results:
  • By having a search engine optimised site that is associated with the searched for keywords and considered by the search engine to be very relevant.
  • Paying to appear when those keywords are typed into a search engine.

You can read more about search engine optimisation in this article: "What is Search Engine Optimisation?"

AdWords are straight forward to set up and very easy to manage. Once set up you have total control over how much you spend on your "campaign/s", it can be as little or as much as you want. You decide what keywords you want to trigger your ads and then you only pay when your ads are clicked. ( Google has systems in place to detect invalid clicks from melicious clickers so you don't pay for a competitor repeatedy clicking on your ad)

Onsitenow can guide you through setting up an adwords account and training you to use the system, it's very straight forward and takes just a couple of hours.

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Mike Nuttall

Author: Mike Nuttall

Mike has been web designing, programming and building web applications in Leeds for many years. He founded Onsitenow in 2009 and has been helping clients turn business ideas into on-line reality ever since. Mike can be followed on Twitter and has a profile on Google+.