Organic search is becoming less important than paid search.
Consider the typical sales funnel of awareness > research > consideration > decision: Search works best in the research phase, it’s not good at awareness
SEO advantages
No incremental cost to traffic
People click on them more
Once you reach ranking you don’t have to do much to maintain it
SEO disadvantages
Less control over timing & landing page experience
Can be difficult to rank for a broad range of categories
Content is what ultimately matters in SEO, but if you are perceived not to have authority, great content won’t matter much
Content is crawl able so search engines like it
Internal linking reinforces what’s important on a site
To rank for a certain search term, it is best to have a single page focused on this topic
Title tag, heading, URL, etc. helps Google determine if the page is relevant to a search query. This is basic and should be done well. Keyword metatag doesn’t matter- Google doesn’t look at it so don’t bother. The description tag is often times used as the accompanying description text to each search result
About authority
Search engines use external links and mentions as the primary measure of a site’s authority
Links from other authoritative sites matter most
Social buzz counts for a lot too
Search advertising advantages
More control
Immediate results
Ability to test
Search advertising disadvantages
Incremental cost of traffic- in the long run, traffic costs more than SEO