I was thumbing through Website magazine the other day when I saw an article that had me floored. Someone had asked a bunch of search marketing professionals what they’d do if they were forced to choose between search engine optimization (SEO) or pay-per-click (PPC).

Even more incredibly, they had actually gotten a bunch of people to answer the question (77% opted for SEO). Poor 23% PPC (sniff).

The question makes about as much sense as asking what’s more important about a car, the steering wheel or the accelerator.

Even though I wrote the book about AdWords, I recognize that both have their place in a successful online marketing strategy. (To be fair, the Website magazine article offered interested stats and did end up with a nuanced view of the topic - I’m just picking on them to make a point.)

Let’s compare:

Organic (SEO) traffic is free and can be plentiful. AdWords traffic costs money and can be hard to come by. Score one for SEO.

Organic traffic is more credible than paid ads (at least, judging by searchers’ behavior). Score two for SEO.

Organic traffic can last a lot longer than AdWords traffic, where any idiot with a big checkbook and no understanding of ROI can outbid you and kick you off the first page. Score three for SEO.

PPC traffic used to be more predictable - your organic listings might disappear overnight like dinghies in the Bermuda Triangle when Google tweaked their algorithm, but AdWords was steady and consistent. Until summer 2006, when they started playing with Quality Score and threw the PPC world into an SEO-like tizzy. So no advantage there.

So why is AdWords so great then? Why do I view it as important as SEO? For three reasons: Read the rest of this entry »