Which is better: simply buying your way to the top of the search engines through a pay-per-click PPC campaign or cultivating your organic or natural search engine marketing strategy through search engine optimization SEO? Deciding where your digital marketing dollars should go is difficult for many business owners and often leaves people wondering which is the better strategy. Is there a right or wrong answer? Could it be both? Generally speaking, SEO consists of optimizing your web pages to enhance their position in search engine results.
Even with changes, SEO comes down to providing a website that properly explains what the business does and provides helpful content to both human visitors and Google search crawlers. Good SEO takes work, and results take time to materialize. How much time does it take to see results? But it usually takes at least six months before you start to see results from SEO. With changes to the algorithm over time, you may need to adjust aspects of your SEO program from time to time.
So, instead of a set- it-and-forget-it mentality, you should monitor performance over time and optimize accordingly. Where SEO is the process of organically ranking in the search results, pay-per-click advertising, or PPC advertising using Google Adwords or Bing Ads, is the process of paying to be at the top or bottom of the SERPs, in the real estate allocated to ads.
PPC enables you to have full control of the messaging and links on the search results page. It still takes time to do the initial research and set up a new campaign or ad group. Regardless of how things play out over the long term, there are logical reasons to consider the short-term results of paid search vs organic. You might want to promote a new product, gear up for the holidays, or run a sale or promotion. Or you may just want some quick visibility while you wait for your long-term SEO work to pay off.
Google tends to reward its paying customers with useful information upon which they can capitalize to run a smooth campaign. Want to target specific email addresses or similar audiences? You can do all of this if you use PPC. In the case that you want to run campaigns with targeted messaging in specific geographic locations, PPC is your ticket. You have the ability to show certain ads in one location, while displaying other ads in a different location at the same time.
Want to have 50 different campaigns targeting 50 different locations? These are paid ads, so while you may be able to pull a lever and see results, as soon as you stop pulling that lever, your traffic is gone. That means if you need to lower your budget or stop paying altogether, your business will suffer the consequences of losing the converting traffic immediately.
SEO, on the other hand, is less like a lever and more like a large boulder on a downhill slope: it takes some force to get it moving, but it keeps rolling long after you stop pushing. PPC ads like Google Ads are paid online advertisements which appear next to relevant searches and other content on the web. However, PPC ads can be helpful in connecting with a wider audience online.
First, and most important, make sure the writing on your website is clear, helpful, and descriptive. Explain your topic in simple, easy-to-read language, and try to include words you think a user might search for when looking online for what you offer. Just think about what will be easiest for a user to navigate and understand, and stick to that.
There's no cost to appear in organic search results like Google's, and making small changes to your website with an eye to SEO can greatly impact your search rankings over time. PPC allows for a tight control of budget. Determine how much you are willing to spend per day ideally with some initial and ideal ideas of returns , and set that fixed limit.
PPC provides a laser-targeted way to get in front of potential customers. Ads can be targeted by search keywords, time of day, day of the week, geography, language, device and audiences based on previous visits. Organic traffic, by comparison, is far more scattershot.
While developing good organic visibility can take time, a PPC campaign can be created in days and ramped up in weeks. There is no faster way to get in front of customers at the very moment they are primed to buy than paid search engine advertising. Speed provides agility. Want to test a new product? A new marketing message? You can get rapid feedback on a new product launch or minimum viable product by running a short PPC ad campaign. Marketing intelligence.
Where organic largely hides keyword data in the name of privacy, there is no such restriction with paid search. With conversion tracking and a solid integration with analytics software like Google Analytics , we can determine what keywords convert and at what percentage and cost.
This intelligence can be fed directly into organic search SEO marketing and can inform all other advertising to improve results across the board. Easily split-test ads, landing pages, and even call-to-action buttons to determine where the very best results lie. Again, this information can be fed back into all other digital and traditional marketing endeavors. AdWords does not suffer the same turbulence that the organic results can suffer from.
There are changes, but they tend to have a far lower impact and are more easily managed. Careful use of match types and analysis of the search term reports allow for the removal of junk search and an increase in ROI over time.
If you are a local business targeting a small geographic area and a small set of keywords, you may find that you can generate more than enough leads without breaking the bank. Additionally, over time, accounts can be further optimized to drive down costs and increase return. As with organic search, there are many benefits to paid search advertising or PPC. However, there are also some pitfalls for advertisers to be wary of. PPC can be expensive. It is not always the case, but costs can quickly add up.
If you are targeting entire countries or running international campaigns, those costs can spiral. Paid search advertising is, as the name suggests, paid — so it requires constant investment. Stop paying the piper, and your ads go away and your lead generation dries up. So long as you have a solid acquisition cost, then this should not be a problem, but in contrast to SEO, it can feel like a bad deal. Of course, SEO should be ongoing to keep the opposition at bay, but organic traffic can be a little more robust.
There are various options for search advertising with PPC , and making smart choices here will influence results.
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