what to spend on to earn money?

Context or SEO, or maybe both? Let’s once and for all dot the i’s in the question “what to choose?” to decide exactly how you can earn more.

So, SEO and advertising are not enemies. They are able to coexist together and complement each other. It is precisely to supplement, since each of the tools copes well with its task alone.

How does contextual advertising work?

For reference: contextual advertising is text and multimedia ads that are placed in Yandex and Google search results or on partner sites.

Mostly a context with formed demand. Hence the main advantage – it brings a warm audience. And the main disadvantage is that it is poorly suited for promoting new products and services.

Direct attracts traffic to the site in two ways:

Here the search engine offers the user an answer to a specific question. An advertising offer can be located in any part of the search results: above, below or to the side of it. For example, this is how it looks in Yandex.

In this case, advertising is placed in the content of the site on which the user is currently located.

It will be located where the resource owner has allocated a place for it. Let's show it using the example of the weather website Gismeteo.

What about the cost?

The cost of advertising depends on the number of clicks on it. This means that money is debited from the advertising campaign account every time a user clicks on an ad. There is no charge for impressions.

There is also a strategy that pays for targeted actions (leads). But it is less common because it usually generates less traffic. More often, pay-per-click strategies are used – with each click on the site, money is written off.

It would seem good. You only need to pay for potential clients. However, not all so simple:

PS This is an axiom in website promotion, but we couldn’t help but remind you of it.

• Yandex.Direct and Google AdWords set prices for one click and conduct a kind of auction for advertisers. The more people who want to show an ad for a specific request, the higher the bid.

What needs to be done to make advertising work?

First you need to register with Yandex.Direct and Google AdWords. The next step is to create companies in which you indicate: time of impressions, region, key phrases. Don't forget about adjusting bids, strategy, and other targeting conditions.

After you have created an ad, it is moderated and payment is made. The proposals then go to auction. Bets are posted.

If a given key phrase matches the query the user is looking for, an auction is held between interested advertisers. Rates are being adjusted.

When you move (click), the amount is debited from the advertiser. Its value depends on the current auction and the bids of its participants.

With competent work by a marketer and using only advertising to promote a resource, the result looks like this:

Sources of traffic on the site where contextual advertising is carried out.

Benefits of contextual advertising

The main advantage of direct is the instant attraction of traffic. No internet marketing tool can compete with this fact.

The company receives referrals almost immediately after payment. This is convenient for all site owners, especially for new sites, since the new resource is ranked lower in search results.

Interested users who are looking for this product here and now click on ads.

Proper setting of the region, display time and other conditions ensures the most accurate attraction of the target audience.

By using cookies, Direct allows you to return customers and resell the product.

It takes relatively little time to launch an advertising campaign.

The nuance of contextual advertising

Transitions continue as long as there is funding. As soon as the budget runs out, advertising stops, which means the flow of customers stops.

Also, although it seems easy, launching and running an advertising campaign requires experience and certain skills.

In addition, the size of the budget is important to Yandex. In current realities, it is difficult to count on success if the advertising budget is less than 50 thousand rubles.

Website conversion plays an even bigger role. With a conversion of 1-2%, the results will also be bad. For Yandex's machine learning algorithms, data on applications alone will not be enough and they will not be able to select an adequate target audience.

What is SEO and what is it used for?

SEO is a set of measures aimed at improving a website’s position in search results.

A SEO specialist, like a contextologist, works with search queries. The goal of an SEO specialist is to get into the TOP 10 organic results, which are located immediately after advertising messages.

How to work with SEO?

We have collected the entire pool of tasks that an SEO specialist faces so that he can raise the website’s position for the promoted query to the TOP of organic results.

Here's what a SEO does:

• Works with the robots.txt file – it indicates in it which pages and data should be closed from indexing and which ones should be closed. Simply put, it tells search robots what is worth indexing and what is not.

• Eliminates broken links and dangling nodes, the presence of which negatively affects rankings in Yandex and Google.

• Corrects errors in meta tags – special markup tags placed on the page that contain descriptions, key phrases and other information. The main requirement for meta tags is uniqueness and relevance.

• Checks the site for loading speed, adaptability, human-readable URLs, presence of micro-markup and other indicators.

• Checks texts for availability and quality (uniqueness, spam, academic nausea, wateriness, etc.).

• Collects the semantic core, develops the site structure, analyzes competitors, checks visibility in search engines, and performs other work on the site.

What does it take to see results from SEO?

After completing all the work that we talked about above, all that remains is to wait. Yes, this is the first thing that the owner of any website will have to put up with. SEO does not give instant results, unlike contextual advertising.

But it allows you to completely “groom” the site: correct all technical errors, work out the correct structure that both users and search engines will like, and make it simpler and more understandable to humans.

Depending on the competitive environment of the site, the first results can be seen after 3 months. In some areas you have to wait up to six months. But the wait pays off in full. The number of clicks from search engines is growing every month.

Benefits of SEO promotion

A user who navigates to a site using SEO will cost the resource owner less than a visitor from contextual advertising.

Most people go to a website from organic results, ignoring advertising messages.

Even if work to promote the site is stopped, it will retain its position in the search results for some time.

What about the downsides?

The main disadvantage of SEO is that promotion results can be seen after 3 or more months.

So which is better SEO or context?

Arguments about which is better, direct or SEO, are pointless.

It is their combination that leads to high results. With a well-built strategy, you can get traffic and return on investment from both sources.

Algorithms change all the time, and what works today may not work tomorrow. Therefore, if, for example, contextual advertising breaks, then the leads will come from SEO. And if you only use Direct and it breaks, then the company will basically be left without incoming applications.

If the promotion strategy is based only on the direct message, then with a constant increase in the cost per click, the context develops a certain dependence. Because it will be impossible to abandon the only source of traffic.

Don't forget that shows last as long as there is a budget.

SEO is slow. But users are more loyal to organic products. It has a high return on investment and high quality traffic. Maintains a long-lasting effect even when work is stopped.