Many journalists, writers and 'experts' on the internet would have you believe that search engine optimization (SEO) is free. This is not entirely true though. Whilst SEO need not be expensive, putting SEO into action correctly will at the very least take time and effort on your part. With that in mind, SEO done right will deliver far greater benefits, that last much longer term than you will get through alternative search engine marketing (SEM) and other online advertising methods.

When your site is receiving 'free' hits and traffic from organic search engine results, and links on external websites, there not as much need (and in some cases no need) to spend additional dollars on pay per click ad campaigns. SEO done right therefore, will save your business money. PPC and other marketing campaigns will usually work only as long as you carry on paying for them. SEO on the other hand carries on working long after you stop investing in it, as long as it is content-centric SEO.

For many sites on tight budgets (isn't that all of them?), correct and effective SEO can make the difference between success and failure. Due to this, it truly is worth spending a bit of time and effort in the research and development stages of your website, to build SEO visibility into the fabric of the site's structure and architecture. This will pay for itself over and over again.

Adopting SEO from the beginning and as a core component of your online strategy will make everything else easier in the long run. When your web designers, your IT people, and your marketing department think about SEO in all their decision making, the pay off you will reap from SEO will be many times more than if you only try and implement SEO as an afterthought.

Following is a summary of the advantages and disadvantages of PPC and other search engine marketing strategies.

PPC Advantages:

• Can provide instant traffic from the time you launch the campaign

• Is easier to implement, with most search engines providing you platforms

• Is easier to manage since you can just turn it off and on

PPC Disadvantages:

• Can become very expensive very quickly, particularly for expensive/high traffic keywords with low conversion rates

• In placements, the best positions will be allocated to those advertisers paying the most

• There is not as much trust in PPC as there is in organic results

• Once you stop paying, the visitors stop coming

SEO Advantages:

• Can be far cheaper to implement

• The benefits are longer lasting and sustainable

• Helps to increase trust for your website and brand

• The click through rate is often higher than with PPC

• The growth in your website traffic will be more natural, and reliant on your site's content

SEO Disadvantages:

• Getting results in the beginning can take weeks or months

• It takes brain power, and effort to do it right

• It comes with no guarantees.

Whilst it is true that SEO comes with no guarantees on your search engine rankings, all SEO effort can improve your rankings, making certain that you get more traffic than you would have otherwise. Finally, SEO has worked for clients over and over again, which cannot be said for most other internet marketing strategies being sold on the internet..