Glossary

What are Sponsored Listings?

Sponsored results are those that the owner of the originating site has paid the search engines to put in place. They will generally appear on the right hand side or across the top of the users web browser, in a coloured section which also indicates that they are sponsored and not organic results. There are four other main differences between sponsored and organic search engine listings.

1. Sponsored listings can be shown almost immediately (if you are willing to make the highest bidders on the cost-per-click amount), organic results often take weeks or months to put into place.

2. Sponsored results will cost the originator each time the link is pressed and can therefore quickly get very expensive especially if the key term is competitive. Organic links do not cost anything when they are clicked on but are harder to get into the results.

3. Sponsored links can be put almost anywhere, even if it's not strictly relevant and perhaps because of this, a lot of people tend to skip over them and go to the organic links, which are deemed to be more relevant by the search engines.

4. Once someone stops paying for a sponsored link, it will be removed from the results immediately. Organic results tend to stay around the top of the results once they get there if they are maintained well. If you keep content, relevant, updated and continue to build a stream of good quality inbound links an organic listing can last for years.

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