The main benefit? To get found online, get more leads, beat this recession and grow your business.

Once your website has reached a certain level of quality, the next question is usually whether you should focus on Adwords Pay-Per-Click (PPC) or organic Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

I’ve been helping folks make decisions on this topic quite often these days. Here’s a very interesting little tidbit of information from SEOMoz:

The Disconnect in PPC vs. SEO spending

There’s a big disconnect in the way marketing dollars are allocated to search engine focused campaigns. Let me highlight:

Not surprisingly, search advertising should continue to be the largest category, growing from $9.1 billion in 2007 to $20.9 billion in 2013.
- Source: C|Net News, June 30, 2008

OK. So companies in the US spent $10 billion last year on paid search ads, and even more this year. How about SEO?

SEO: $1.3 billion (11%)
- Source: SEMPO data via Massimo Burgio, SMX Madrid 2008

Conclusions: SEO drives 75%+ of all search traffic, yet garners less than 15% of marketing budgets for SEM campaigns. PPC receives less than 25% of all search traffic, yet earns 80%+ of SEM campaign budgets.

What does this mean to you, as a contractor trying to market his business?

If you’re going to spend money on promoting your website, you should:

1. Use Adwords PPC as a garnish, not the main course.
2. Spend the bulk of your time, money, and energy working to dominate the top of the organic (relevant) search listings so you can capture most of the traffic in your market.

Good luck in your campaign to get found online and grow your business!

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