What's the Difference between Paid Search and Organic Search?

When using a search engine to find a restaurant near you or to find a gift for your mother, have you ever noticed some of the first few search results have the word “Ad” located next to the search title?

Companies and organizations pay big money to compete for your clicks, and those that are near the top are paying for their ad to appear when you search terms related to their business. This is known as Search Engine Marketing (SEM).  Those companies who place a higher bid on those terms will appear at the top.

The search results that appear just after these “Paid Ads” are achieving their higher status on   Search Engine Results Pages (SERP) through Organic Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Through a combination of strategic Page Titles, Page Descriptions and Keywords, Search Engines determine which website pages are most relevant to your search query and will determine which pages will score the best SERP.

Successful marketing strategies utilize a combination of SEO and SEM to ensure maximum online visibility.