Updated 18 September 2026. Originally published in 2013; revised to replace outdated advice and links.
Organic search and pay-per-click advertising can both bring customers to your website, but they work differently. PPC is advertising, rather than a paid form of SEO.
What organic SEO does
SEO improves how clearly your website can be found, understood and used. That can involve technical fixes, service content, internal links and evidence of your work. You do not pay Google for each organic click, but research, production and maintenance still cost time or money.
Progress depends on your starting point, the searches involved and competition. Useful work can keep helping after publication, but positions and traffic are never guaranteed.
What paid search does
Paid campaigns can place adverts in front of people searching for relevant terms, subject to the advertising platform’s policies and auction. They can support a time-sensitive offer or test a particular landing page. You need a suitable budget, good targeting and a page that follows through on the advert.
When an advert stops running, its paid clicks stop. That does not mean every visitor to the business disappears: direct, referral and organic traffic are separate sources.
Choose around the job
- A short promotion: paid search may help test demand promptly, if the economics work.
- An ongoing service: invest in pages that explain the offer and answer questions well.
- A limited budget: focus on a small number of valuable customer needs rather than spreading effort across everything.
- Both channels: use the evidence from each to improve messages and landing pages.
Neither option automatically has a lower cost or better return. Measure qualified enquiries or sales against the full cost of the activity, and make sure a conversion represents a genuine completed action.
Google explains the role of organic optimisation in its guide to choosing SEO help. Explore inLIFE’s SEO services or ask us which approach fits your business.
