There are two kinds of search engine listings. Natural and Sponsored or Paid Listings. Paid listings are usually labelled in a separate section such as “sponsored listings”, at the top or right column of the page and Natural listings are the listings that are not paid for. They are determined by the search engines’ algorithms for finding, sorting and ranking pages based on relevancy.
Natural Search Optimization is the process of improving the quality and volume of traffic to websites via search engines. It is called Natural or Organic Search Optimization because website owners do not pay the search engines to list their websites in any particular order. Natural listings are the listings that are not paid for.
Sponsored Listings or PPC (Pay-per-click) advertising, is a form of online advertising whereby visitors are directed to an advertiser’s website after clicking on an advertisement, and the advertiser pays for each visitor on a per-click basis.
Each click can be anywhere from 1 pence to several pounds in cost, depending on many factors, including the pay-per-click search engine being used to advertise on, and the search phrase that is being targeted.
Perhaps the best example of pay-per-click advertising is Google’s PPC advertising called Google AdWords.
Google Adwords, in a nutshell, works like this; when a Google search engine user types in an applicable search phrase for your business and you are bidding on that search phrase your text ad has a chance to be displayed. You are only charged when the search engine user clicks on your text ad, hence the name pay-per-click.
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