You've seen those "Sponsored" search results, where people bid to come up high, and wondered if it would pay off for you. You've also wondered if you still need a search engine expert to make your site do the same thing. I'll show you how optimization is clearly more cost effective, whereas paying for clicks gets immediate results.

Pay Per Click (PPC) is a new way of coming to the top of search engine results. You choose a search phrase, like Dallas Realtor", and place a bid. Bid high enough, and you come up on top. Nice.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the traditional way of helping sites come up high in search engines. An expert "optimizes" the content, design and architecture of your site to appeal to search engines. Some experts can increase measures of "popularity" that engines use to rank sites.

If SEO is done effectively, your site can appear high up in the results for a great variety of search phrases, across a broad spectrum of top search engines and directories. Many successful companies have based their entire internet marketing budget on SEO.

Which should you choose - PPC or SEO? Each has their strengths.

Expert optimization of a Web site is generally much more cost effective than bidding for search results. Here's why:

In my experience, good SEO should net a Realtor somewhere between 500-1000 visitors per month. I've seen this figure eclipse 2000 visitors per month when all the conditions are right. Let's use the conservative number of 500/month.

What would 500 visitors/month cost you with PPC?

I researched the current top 3 bids for the following 20 cities in Overture.com, the granddaddy of PPC: Peoria, Santa Rosa, Harrisburg, Dallas, Lansing, Carson City, Boston, Richmond, El Paso, Milwaukee, Des Moines, Raleigh, Sarasota, Boise, Poughkeepsie, Topeka, Santa Fe, Austin, Dover and Murfreesboro. The search phrase I researched for each was "City real estate."

The average bid to reach position #3 was $1.01 per click. To reach #1, it was $2.83. Bids ranged from $.05 up through over $20.00 per click. Note results are distributed to search engines only if you are one of the top 3 bidders.

Using the lower $1.01 per click average for position #3, 500 visitors per month would cost $505/mo., which is $6060 per year. Expert SEO should cost significantly less than this.

Even if your area was half the average bid that I found for position #3, your cost per click would still be over $.50, making 500 visitors per month cost you $250/mo., or $3000/yr. Optimization should still cost less than this.

Expert SEO isn't cheap. It can be a $1000 or more up front. Some companies charge a monthly fee in addition. But compared to paying $.50 - $1.00 per click, or even much, much higher, it seems downright economical. And that's my point: Good SEO should generally always be more cost effective than PPC.

Here's the kicker: SEO can last years. I know many agents who have sites still doing very well, several years after they made the investment in a site with good SEO. PPC disappears the second you stop bidding on results. If you spread the cost of SEO over 2 or 3 years, its cost effectiveness doubles or triples.

The problem with SEO is time. It can take months for good optimization to start working. PPC is fast. Within minutes of logging on, you can be bidding on phrases, appearing in search results, and watching your traffic reports increase.

If speed is more important than cost, PPC wins. If cost is most important to you, SEO comes out ahead.

But why choose between them? They both should be on your short list of site marketing techniques. Try starting out with the more cost-effective SEO. Once you've learned to convert this traffic to leads and sales, you can then start to selectively add the more costly PPC to your marketing mix.