With all of the buzz around Google and Bing these days, it’s hard to know whether focusing on paid search or organic search can drive the best results.

In this article, we break down each and discuss the importance of the search for an overall marketing strategy.

Organic Search

When we talk about organic search, we are referring to the results that occur for someone searching on Google, or other search engines, which are not the paid advertisements typically seen at the top of the search. There are complex algorithms that determine the results served including the keywords used, location, and user’s search history.

Search Engine Optimization

There are many other factors related to the website itself that Google uses to determine results. For example, someone searching for a particular vehicle model would likely see the manufacturer’s website, as this is a long-standing site with content that Google sees as a trusted source and gets infinitely more traffic than an individual site might. Optimizing your website for search results to be found takes a combination of fixing technical errors, ensuring landing pages contain the right keywords, obtaining links from other highly trusted sites, and building out content so that the bots have more pages and information to crawl. The goal of optimizing is to get the pages for your dealership to show up as high as possible in the results for relevant searches.

Paid Search

Paid search refers to the paid advertisements that you see at the top of the search engine results, usually indicated with “Ad”, or “Sponsored” near the headline text. There are many different models that can be used to get an advertisement to appear here, but bidding the amount you’re willing to pay per click is one of the most common. These results are determined by the algorithm in a similar way to organic search, but you’re bidding to have them show up at the top of the page versus wherever your website currently falls into the results.

So, which is most important for a car dealer?

As with many things in life, the answer is both. Paid search advertising and organic search are both fundamental to an auto dealer’s digital marketing strategy. While constantly working to optimize your website to appear higher in the organic results is key, it can take time to build up that rapport with Google and to determine the best strategy for your dealership. Paid search ads can be created and launched within a couple of days, helping to drive immediate results and ramp up site traffic.

A Beautiful Partnership

At the end of the day, it’s vital to get potential customers to your dealership website to get them to convert, i.e. call or email you. By ensuring that the foundational elements of your site are there, you can build off of that foundation and use paid ads to drive more traffic and reach customers who might not see you on the 2nd, 3rd, or subsequent pages. When you combine SEO and paid search advertising, the results will come.