SEO and PPC marketing are commonplace in today’s digital world. But which do you choose? Do you know what the terms mean, and when to apply each to create a successful marketing campaign?
These are important questions that you need to know the answers to when planning on both growing and sustaining website traffic. Additionally, SEO and PPC marketing can be incredible tools for announcing products or services to your customers.
First things first, you have to know the terms you’re using.
What are SEO & PPC?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, which is the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results.
When you type something into Google, you are presented with a list of results; or SERP (the search engine results page) which shows organic results and paid results.
Paid search results have a little green box with the word “ad” before the listing; this is where a company, like yours, has paid to have their page show up at the top of the list. This can be done through Google Ads search campaign, which charges you when someone clicks on that link. Paid search works to drive traffic to your website through relevant ads.
How Does SEO Work?
Let’s look at the advantages of SEO.
Organic traffic has staying power. As long as you can rank highly in Google for your desired keywords, you can generate consistent search traffic to your website. This means steady growth, over time.
There are hundreds of ranking factors that search engine algorithms consider in response to searches, and they are constantly updating and refining their process. But to put it simply, if your products are unique, you use appropriate keywords, and you link to and from other trusted websites, your traffic will grow.
How Does Paid Search Work?
Pay-per-click (PPC) is an advertising model where you pay for clicks to your website. It’s typically associated with search engine advertising like Google Ads. Paid marketing is like a faucet. Turn on the tap and traffic will flow. But as soon as the tap is off (i.e. you run out of money), your traffic will dry up.
Yes, it works. You’ll find your website placed on the top of SERP pages, as long as you’re paying for those results.
For SEO to work you might need to wait for days, weeks, or even months. For PPC, it’s much quicker. On top of that, paid search allows for very granular targeting.
The downside? Paid search can be very costly longterm.
SEO vs PPC: What’s Best for Business?
Neither is better or worse than the other. Both are legitimate sources of traffic. That said, there are some situations where one channel may make more sense.
Here are a few:
- You have an innovative product. To get organic traffic, you’ll need to target topics that people are already searching for. But if you’re building a disruptive company with an innovative product, it is likely that no one is looking for it.
- You’re gearing up for a launch / you have a one-time offer. Are you preparing for a product launch or promoting a one-time event? SEO might not be the right strategy because it takes longer to gain momentum.
- You’re building a site with the intention to sell. Buyers and sellers love SEO because you don’t have to monitor the campaign actively. Once you rank in Google for your desired keywords, it often takes less work to manage compared to PPC. Ranking in the first place means more and more people link to you naturally over time. And because links correlate with rankings, your rankings stay put.
SEO and PPC: Using Them in Tandem
The best businesses use both SEO and PPC because they compliment each other. After all, if both channels are profitable, why wouldn’t you want to do both?
Imagine that SEO is an apple and PPC is an orange. Can you say an apple is better than an orange, and vice versa? Both are fruits. Both provide vitamins. And both are vastly different.
If you want a complete diet, you should have them both.
After all, you should be taking advantage of and leveraging all marketing channels that work for your business.