Many people think that Pay-Per-Click (PPC) traffic and Organic traffic are two different entities, but in reality they work together to benefit one another.

PPC traffic is great for quickly gaining and sustaining traffic and conversions, possibly while you’re waiting for your SEO efforts to be seen by the search engines. PPC is also great for promoting sales or seasonal promotions, while SEO is good for building website credibility, escalating your reach and increasing conversions. PPC allows you to control targeting, select search terms that you may not have an organic presence for, and choose which phrases you do not want your ads to appear for (negatives key phrases).  SEO and PPC compliment one another and allow for different types of control, reach and conversions, but also help one another to achieve their top potential.

Google AdWords operates on a Quality Score system. That score contributes to how much you pay for a click and how well your paid ads are positioned. There are a handful of factors that go into that score, such as click-through rate, ad copy relevance and page load time.  Believe it or not, following SEO best practices can actually lead to a higher quality PPC landing page. If you fully optimize your site’s code and have taken into account page load time, then you are more apt to have a high quality score for your PPC efforts.

So when it comes to SEO vs. PPC, there is no clear-cut answer as to one source of traffic being better than the other, unless you’re limited by funds or resources. Both SEO and PPC work great independently, but using these two marketing channels together will add additional leverage. By running both SEO and PPC together, you give your online business more opportunities to reach more of your customers.

There are a variety of ways to gain traffic to your site, many of which can cost a pretty penny, but if you are going to pay for traffic you ought to drive as much free traffic as possible as well.

Below are three easy steps to gaining better organic positions and more FREE traffic to your site:

1. Content, Content, Content

Content is King. Search engines love content. The more content that there is on your website the more opportunities you are giving searchers to find you. The goal behind gaining higher search results is to get more visitors to your site. Unique content will help boost your site’s rankings.

4 easy ways of creating content on your website:

1. Translate everything into text. Search engines can’t read images.
2. Turn PDF’s into HTML, since PDFs ultimately lead search engines into a dead end.
3. Don’t hide important content behind forms. Search engines aren’t able to fill out forms.
4. Create an onsite Blog. Give the engines fresh content frequently. Sites that consistently update their content tend to rank better with the search engines.

2. Keyword Rich Content

Each page should focus on its own single unique keyword phrase giving your site the ability to rank for a variety of keywords. Having multiple key phrases on one page will dilute your keyword density and the ability to rank for important key phrases. Make sure to include your key phrases throughout your static content, as well as in your Meta Data (title, description and keywords). Keyword density is a measure of how many times a keyword appears within the page. As a best practice you should aim for a keyword density of approximately 4-7%. Anything higher runs the risk of looking like keyword “stuffing” which is frowned down upon by the search engines. If the keyword appears too many times, then it does not look natural and can result in poor search engine results. Here are a few free tools to check your keyword density:

http://www.morevisibility.com/tools/keyword-density/

3. Site Speed

Google has formally introduced speed into their ranking algorithm, so being aware of how fast your site loads should be of the utmost importance to you. Even more importantly then how the search engines take into account your load time, remember that by improving your site’s speed, you’re also improving your visitors experience. Here is a free tool to seeing how quickly your website loads:

http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/ 

These are just three of many easy-steps to achieving higher rankings and more FREE traffic to your site.

Have you ever stepped back and looked at your website from a user’s perspective? You only get one first impression, so make sure it’s a lasting one. Good design and functionality is critical in giving a great user experience and is essential in building trust and relationships with your visitors. It is best to think about the experience from your visitor’s perspective, since you really wouldn’t be much without them.

Your website is your face to prospective consumers, and as a result can heavily impact your bond with them. Every interaction a user has on your site directly impacts the relationship they have with you and how they will portray your site to others. Poor design, content errors and confusion can take away from your credibility. A well-designed site, with simple navigation, good content and clear calls to action will impact your business favorably.

Streamline the funnel you want visitors to venture down. Let users know what you want them to do in a clear and concise manner. Don’t confuse or overwhelm the reader with an abundant amount of content and calls to action. Don’t cause frustration or reasons for them to want to leave the site with error messages and pop-ups.

Be sure to enable an analytics tracking system, such as Google Analytics, so you can better assess your users and their experiences on your site. Most analytics platforms allow you to dive deeper into how your traffic has arrived, how much time they spent on a page, if they ventured further into other pages of your site, or if they exited at a certain page, and didn’t venture any further. Analytics can supply you with the ability to monitor trends and patterns with your user’s engagement. Stats can reveal what pages are causing more problems than others. Knowing how your visitors are interacting with your site and what your site’s pain points are, will help to assist you in achieving the best user experience possible. Enabling an analytics platform can help to determine who your target market is, what their likes and dislike are and achieve a higher grade of user engagement.

Always keep in mind that your users are the reason that you can continue to stay in business, so making them happy should remain your main mission. You should consider your users as the main focus behind your design and development efforts and decisions.