Ever wondered where the advertisements on the right of search results come from? These are paid listings. You can participate in the Google AdWords or Microsoft AdCenter campaign and get listed in the paid section of search results. The difference between organic search and paid list is that in organic, you don’t have to pay for the advertisements. In paid listing, you have to pay to search engine providers if a person clicks on the ads. If no one clicks on your advertisement even if it is listed several times or even hundreds of times, you don’t have to pay. This model is called Pay Per Click (PPC). It has obvious advantages. Customers who are genuinely interested in your product or service are the ones most likely to click on the advertisement which means you get a better response to your ad. You can moreover measure cost of advertising versus conversion. By fine tuning your paid listings you can improve the click to conversion ratio. Search engines provide tools to measure various parameters of your paid listing. By monitoring the response you can understand the dynamics of the entire operation.

Just like organic search (SEO or Search Engine optimization), paid listing is also based on keywords. But in paid listings, search engines provide exact statistics of the number of times your advertisement was listed and the subsequent clicks which followed. Each keyword is analyzed separately. Organic search results can be improved if you opt for paid listing for some days. Once you have understood the relevance of specific keywords, you can modify your organic search campaign.

There is a misconception that you must either opt for organic search (SEO) or for paid listings. In actual fact, it is seen that running both the campaigns concurrently can do wonders to your search engine ranking. The process of learning becomes faster and you can quickly grasp the intricacies of your keywords and their impact on search results.