SEO vs PPC: Which Solution Will Benefit Your Company Most?
When it comes to increasing your website traffic and improving the amount of leads on your website, we are surrounded by endless options. Two of the most effective options, however, are SEO and PPC. Two vastly different methods of increasing said traffic, with different results.
If you’ve never used either of these methods, or have only perhaps tried one, how would we know which is most beneficial and effective in reaching our goals?
We discuss the major differences, pros and cons of both SEO and PPC, so you can decide which results you most want:
SEO vs PPC – Differences Explained
SEO is organic; it stems from a well-optimised website, SEO enriched blogs or articles, and the right kind of landing pages necessary to convert visitors into leads. SEO is usually implemented by an outsourced SEO company, or a salaried in-house person allocated to creating optimised work. There is a set monthly spend, and the work can be tailored easily.
PPC is paid search – not organic at all. The way PPC works is the company would research the keywords their competitors are ranking for, or have already employed PPC for themselves, and then “bid” on the same or similar keyword. When a potential customer clicks on the sponsored advert on Google, a rate becomes payable per click the website reaches. These types of “adverts” are marked with the “AD” logo on Google, unfortunately something not all visitors trust.
SEO Pros and Cons
SEO or Search Engine Optimisation is an organic way to engage customers in a fun and unobtrusive way; it is a great way to answer queries and draw people to your website – essentially without paying for it.
The biggest benefit is that your content remains evergreen – i.e. – always relevant. Updating older blogs will keep them “alive’ and continue gaining more visitors the longer it stays posted.
You also have the invaluable opportunity to add outbound, quality links to well-known websites, and in turn may garner some inbound links – especially useful for boosting your domain authority. That being said, you can also add pop-up forms to your pages to entice visitors to leave their contact details with you, through which you could possibly convert them to leads and eventually customers.
The biggest (and likely only) downfall of SEO is the time factor; this is a long process, with many trial and error areas. It takes a while to start seeing result s- usually only starting from month 4 of constant work onwards. If you’re patient, you will see the results.
PPC Pros and Cons
PPC (Pay Per Click) I a method used within Google; you choose keywords most relevant to your business, as well s some keywords listed by competitors, and you place a monetary “bid” on them; the more popular the keyword, the higher rate you will pay (and vice versa).
The keywords will be crawled by Google and presented to anyone who searched a closely related or exact key word phrase match; these results pop up at the top of the page on Google’s search results, and are marked with “AD”.
This can be highly effective, as you can change your keywords as often as you need to tailor your results to whichever aspect of your business requires attention.
The two major downfalls of PPC are the constant cost for a short period of as well as the fact that you do not see long-term benefits from this type of marketing due to the short lifespan of your marketed content.
In summary; while opting for SEO or PPC may be too much of a case of “putting all your eggs in one basket”, it might be a good idea – especially for those who have not dabbled in either – to combine the two. Start writing highly-optimised blogs and bid on a similar keyword. You will reap the results of the PPC for immediate leads, and SEO will slowly begin to rank.
Need some expert advice on how to go about implementing SEO or PPC on your website? Click here to get in touch with us today!
Cover Image Credit: LinkedIn
