Talking to a few friends about blog marketing and SEO these days, I realised that many people (and small companies) would opt to take the easy route out in Internet marketing, driving traffic to their sites using pay per click traffic like Google Adwords.

While I am not surprised that people want to see immediate results when they are paying money up front for Internet advertising (and pay per click does just that!), I think there are also benefits of optimization for organic search. Here are three reasons why.

#1 SEO and Blog Marketing puts you on the organic listings

While many may not yet tell the difference between the organic listings and sponsored PPC links, there is a small percentage of people (like me) that do, and these people who are aware really rarely click these links. So in a sense, a PPC marketing strategy might work for a less Internet savvy audience.

#2 You don’t Pay Per Click

Yes, optimization for organic search listings do cost a lot more than PPC upfront, since optmization is most of the time, a tedious process. However, it might make you more for your buck in the long run. Consider this.

If you are NOT optimizing for a very competitive keyword, PPC ads are cheaper, but it would also only take 2 – 3 months for a good SEO Expert to get you to the top of your listings.

If you ARE competing for competitive keywords, then all the more you should use SEO, because PPC ads can really take the money out of your pocket “in a click!” Imagine paying over a dollar for each visitor to your site! For more competitive keywords, SEO will probably take 6 months or more, but would you imagine how powerful it would be if you had top placement for an organic listing? You will be getting so much free traffic after that initial hard work!

#3 You will probably rank well for most search engines if done well

A good SEO Expert will probably help you to optimize your site for more than one search engine, so you don’t have to worry about monitoring your ad campaigns across Google, Yahoo and MSN, or the smaller PPC search engines. While Google has over 60% of the market share when it comes to search traffic, there is still the other 40% which I think should not be neglected!

Well, I guess if a firm wants to really see immediate benefits for the money they pay, they should go for PPC advertising, but I feel they they should give organic SEO a go for the longer term effects.