SEO or contextual advertising: what to choose? What is SEO optimization.

Many website owners think about what is better: search engine optimization or contextual advertising? In what direction is it preferable to direct the website budget? In this article we will try to answer these questions.

Contextual advertising and search engine optimization (SEO) are one of the most popular tools for promoting websites on the Internet. It is worth noting that context and SEO require certain costs, which are not always available to novice webmasters.

Choice of promotion: contextual advertising or SEO

Context and SEO have some common features - the results are displayed in search engines and, accordingly, in the profit from the Internet project. These tools are aimed at attracting a motivated target audience to the site.

In addition to similarities, there are also big differences.

Aspect of time

You can, for example, do:

• modify pages (optimize, add text);
• improve usability;
• change snippets;

But you will see changes no earlier than in a month.

Settings

SEO doesn't allow for such fine-tuning. This leads to a higher percentage of untargeted visits and refusals. But given the fact that you don’t pay for every click from the search results, this is not so critical.

Relevance to the request

Contextual advertising management systems make it possible to edit advertisements and completely change their text. This means that during testing, you can find the most converting ad text options that will best match the user’s request.

Conversion

Contextual advertising is a marketing tool with one of the highest conversion rates. This is due to the extensive customization and targeting capabilities. Search engine optimization, as a rule, cannot boast such high conversion rates.

Monitoring

An advertising campaign in context requires constant vigilant monitoring. This is due to the fact that the cost per click and position can constantly change. The fact is that the number of ads for your requests may be increased by competitors or decreased, which will change the position of impressions. To optimize costs, you need to regularly intervene in the initial campaign settings.

SEO promotion does not require such careful monitoring. However, during search engine promotion, it is necessary to constantly engage in analytics and monitor changes in search engine algorithms and competitors’ strategies.

Transition cost

The cost of attracting a target user to a website in contextual advertising is quite stable. If there is a need to increase the number of transitions, then you need to increase the budget proportionally. In addition, you should consider the possibility of increasing the cost per click, which will raise your ads above the competition.

At the first stages of search engine SEO promotion, the cost may seem quite high. However, over time, this figure will decrease significantly and will be significantly lower than the cost of acquisition using contextual advertising.

Inertia of the effect

When you use up the entire balance in your account, contextual advertising will immediately stop displaying. If you stop funding search engine SEO promotion, the results will remain in occupied positions for some time and then gradually begin to decline as competitors become more active.

What is better contextual advertising or SEO?

Advice

It’s better to act like this: after launching a commercial project, for quick results you need to use contextual advertising. So, you can quickly attract your target audience to the site. In parallel with the context, it is necessary to engage in search engine SEO promotion.

In the process, it will be possible to gradually reduce the cost of contextual advertising, but it all depends on each individual case and budget. Sometimes this is not advisable. By reducing costs for context, you reduce the number of conversion users, which means you deprive yourself of additional profit.

1 490 0

The two main ways to bring users to the site are to be in the TOP of search results for the necessary queries - that is, and. Each of them has its own advantages and disadvantages that need to be studied to determine the best way to reach targeted visitors.

What is SEO promotion

The main goal of SEO promotion is to obtain organic traffic not in the short term, but in the long term. This effect is achieved by working on the design, usability and content of the site.

Site positions for search queries are determined by highly complex algorithms. Robots study hundreds of parameters, each of which directly affects the final result. The main focus of SEO is on content, which should be:

• Unique. The content of the page should not be found on other resources on the Internet.
• With the right number of keys. Too many may result in a filter being applied to the resource, and their absence may result in insufficient relevance to the request.
• No repetitions. PSs perceive tautologies negatively. For them, the page's position in the search results may be lowered.
• Relevant to the “H1” tag and search query, respectively.
• Useful for site visitors.

SEO promotion is carried out by a specialist - an optimizer.

Benefits of SEO

Properly executed content optimization can open up enormous prospects for the website owner. This is possible due to the following reasons:

• Search engine promotion allows Yandex and Google. However, even if you get into the TOP 5, the probability of receiving targeted visitors is quite high.
• There is no need to constantly use the services of optimizers, since over time all processes can be automated.
• If search engine promotion stops completely, the site may remain in its position for a long time.
• According to statistics, people more often go to organic search sites, so we can talk about user trust in the ranking factors of the search engine.
• With the right approach to website promotion, it becomes as relevant, useful and convenient as possible. Such a resource can confidently be called SDL, that is, “a site for people.”

SEO promotion serves to increase the conversion of commercial resources, turning visitors into buyers of goods or customers of services. This works due to the fact that only high-quality, proven sites will reach the top of search results.

Cons of SEO

Among the main disadvantages of this method of receiving traffic it is worth noting:

• Getting the desired result can take quite a long time - from several weeks to 2-3 or more months.
• The effectiveness of the work may depend on the level of professionalism of the optimizer and changes in the PS algorithms, as well as on the latter’s introduction of new filters.
• Depending on the company’s field of activity, the costs of sending requests to the desired position can be quite high.
• Providing any guarantees in this area is a thankless task, especially for competitive high-frequency commercial requests.

Despite the disadvantages of promotion, it is an increasingly popular way to develop Internet resources, as it allows you to get a stable result.

contextual advertising

Unlike SEO promotion, contextual advertising allows you to receive visitors almost immediately. To do this, just create ads in Google AdWords or Yandex Direct.

Benefits of contextual advertising

There are a number of reasons to actively use contextual advertising. First of all, it is worth noting:

• Getting an immediate increase in the number of visitors. At the same time, traffic has a high conversion rate, since it comes to the site in most cases based on specific commercial offers.
• Contextual advertising can be shown only to residents of a specific city or region, depending on age, gender, etc.
• Correctly configured ads allow you to get site visitors immediately, which is optimal for start-up organizations.
• Ideal for temporary or seasonal requests.
• Allows you to display your own website in special placement positions, that is, higher than search results.

Disadvantages of contextual advertising

• When working with high-frequency queries, the budget for an advertising campaign can be quite significant.
• The position of the site is supported exclusively by advertising, and, accordingly, by an infusion of funds.
• advertising is a rather complicated matter. Entrusting this task to an amateur means losing all your money.
• Website advertising is based on pay-per-click basis, regardless of whether the person has made a purchase of the product or not.
• The effectiveness of a campaign's ads depends on a huge number of factors.
• Many people don’t click on ads on principle.

conclusions

It is quite difficult to choose a winner from the methods of getting traffic described above, since each of them is good in its own way. Many optimizers and webmasters are inclined to believe that each of them can be used together to get optimal results, and there are a number of reasons for this:

• Correctly setting up advertising campaigns allows you not only to recoup all costs, but also to make a good profit.
• During your work, promotion takes a long time, but once you achieve your goal, you will no longer have to invest large amounts of money.
• According to some reports, resources that use advertising services from Yandex and Google receive higher positions.

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06.03.2018 Reading time: 4 minutes

What is search engine optimization (SEO)?

is a set of measures for external and internal website optimization. The main goal is to increase positions in search engine results for effective, selling queries.

Users, entering a particular query in the search bar, are already interested in specific information, product or service. This intent is expressed in the form of search queries. They can take the desired action, that is, order a product or service, if they go to the site they are interested in from the search. Search engine optimization is carried out based on the query core - a list of the most effective keywords that potential buyers enter in the search bar.

How does contextual advertising work?

Payment to the search engine in contextual advertising is made for clicking on ads. There can be any number of impressions, but the click on the ad itself is paid for. The cost varies greatly and directly depends on the competitiveness of requests in different regions. The approximate monthly budget is 5,000 rubles. and higher, but sometimes you may not even spend 2,500 rubles.

Advertisers often use context for quick sales because... the very next day after setting up contextual advertising, you can start receiving calls from clients. Of course, there are also disadvantages. You will need to constantly pay for clicks. And if the budget is over and you turn off advertising, then you shouldn’t wait for any more calls. Business will stop.

You can use context for both single-page landing pages and full-fledged multi-page websites of companies and online stores. But according to statistics, contextual advertising works better when referring to a one-page site, because The target user comes to it for a specific product or service.

What is the difference between SEO and contextual advertising?

No website can get to the TOP without minimal initial optimization. If you continuously use the context, perhaps such a website will get to the TOP, but at least in a year, and most likely much later. And this is with a little optimization. If you don’t deal with the meta tags of the main page, then the site, in principle, should not think about the TOP.

Unlike contextual advertising, SEO optimization will help your website get into the TOP PS within a period of 1 to 6 months for various search queries. We are talking about optimizing the company’s website for 1-2 cities. Very competitive requests require a little more time.

SEO cannot be cheap by definition, but compared to context, the difference is noticeable. After the site gets to the TOP, you just need to maintain it by periodically writing new articles. Just imagine - you are in the top five and don’t pay a single ruble for it. In contextual advertising, on the contrary, you will have to constantly replenish your budget.

Landing page can also be optimized, but getting such a site to the TOP may take longer than a web resource with at least 20 pages, each of which is aimed at promoting certain queries.

What are the advantages of SEO over context?

When is it worth combining SEO and contextual advertising?

Contextual advertising affects the issuance of PS due to behavioral factors. Yandex looks at user behavior on the site, and contextual advertising allows you to link this behavior to a specific search query. If a user came to the site with the request “interior partitions” and spent 3 minutes on this resource, for Yandex this is a clear signal that the site meets the user’s expectations and meets a specific request. Such signals through the PF are taken into account in the overall ranking of the site.

This way, you have an additional way to advertise your new site online and improve its organic rankings. Naturally, before starting an advertising campaign, the site must:

• meet all PS requirements and not be inferior to competitors;
• contain interesting content that will retain visitors for a long time and thereby increase it in the eyes of search engines.

Additional positive signals for the PS can be set goals and their implementation in the Yandex.Metrica and Google Analytics statistics systems.

So, when should you combine SEO and PPC for it to be beneficial?

If all requirements are met and a competent approach to running a campaign, paid contextual advertising can give an additional impetus to the natural development of your website!

What is better – contextual advertising or SEO?

This question is not entirely correct, since for the greatest results it is necessary to do both.

In the process, you will be able to reduce the budget for contextual advertising (it all depends on the specific case and available financial resources). Sometimes this is not entirely practical. By cutting costs on context, you reduce the number of conversion users, which means you deprive yourself of additional profit.

Surely you have heard about search engine promotion of a website. Even if you are unfamiliar with this formulation, then you know very well that there are search engines (Yandex, Google, Rambler and others) that provide users with lists of sites in response to entered queries (for example, “rent an apartment”, “delivery of lunches to the office” or “hotels in the Moscow region”). Moreover, some sites go to first places in a search engine, and some can be found only by scrolling through a few pages.

Exactly search engine promotion(or, as it is also called, search engine optimization of the site) precisely serves to ensure that your site reaches the best places, i.e. in the TOP. More scientifically speaking, search engine optimization of a website (search engine promotion, website promotion, SEO - SearchEngineOptimization) is set of measures to increase the site’s position in search engine results for pre-selected queries.

Why does your company need SEO optimization?

If in the recent past the Internet was used mainly to search for information, today the situation has changed a lot. The constant increase in the number of Internet users, new technologies (communication with the target audience using a website, online payment systems, the ability to order on-line, etc.) and many other factors have turned the Internet into both a powerful marketing tool and a place for sales. simultaneously. For example, the boom in online shopping definitely indicates that skillfully used Internet technologies bring stable profits to website owners.

Internet promotion can be effective for ALL companies whose potential audience is looking for similar products or services on the Internet. According to statistics, the number of Internet users is growing every year; today more than a third of Russians already use the Internet. Moreover, this audience is very attractive for business, because it has high solvency. Think about it, thousands, and perhaps tens and hundreds of thousands of people search for your products every day, but find competitors’ products! And all because more efficient competitors have already taken the best places in search engine results. You too can take these “places in the sun” - to do this you need to start search engine optimization of the site.

Why does the site need to be on first places in search engines?

There are several reasons for this. Firstly, top places in search engines can be compared to prestigious areas of the city. Usually, the client gets his first impression of the company even before visiting the organization, having learned where it is located. The more prestigious the area, the more confidence the client has, and accordingly, the greater the chance that he will choose you. The stereotype works: if a company is located in the very center of the city, then this company is thriving. This stereotype works similarly with SEO promotion. Sites that are in the TOP are, as a rule, the most respected sites.

Secondly, a good location attracts a much larger number of visitors. More than 95 (!) percent of users will pay attention to sites located in the first ten positions (TOP-10, i.e. the first search page). If a search engine returns a company’s website on the fourth page and beyond, then less than 2 percent of users will have the patience to scroll to this page.

Therefore, the higher the site is in the TOP, the more traffic it will have. We recommend being in the TOP 5 search results for the most important queries.

Why is it important to choose the right query list?

Of course, search engine optimization is a very effective way to attract customers, but with one caveat: it must be done by professionals. And the point here is not so much that inept optimization can cost your site penalties, but that the number of site visitors will increase, but the number of buyers will not. For promotion to give the best results, you need to decide.

Why is not promoting in search engines harmful?

There are situations when the user has already chosen several alternatives for himself and is inclined to contact your company and competing companies for additional information. Then the user searches for sites or contacts of these organizations. In such a situation, few will open the city telephone directory or call the help desk to find out information. Most will look for information on the Internet. And if the site is not SEO-optimized, then the user most likely simply will not find information about the company on the Internet! Today's Internet user is extremely spoiled and is not used to spending a lot of time searching. If they don’t find you, they will turn to competitors, the search for information about which will be easier and faster. Agree, it is very unpleasant to lose clients who already wanted to contact you, but simply could not do so.