Learn/SEO-vs-PPC
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Invest right for your site
Every website owner wants to rank high in search results for the site’s most important keywords. But getting into the first page of search results can take a lot of time and search engine optimization (SEO) work, especially if there’s hot competition for the keywords that matter to you.
Many site owners choose to spend marketing dollars on pay per click (PPC) listings. These ads appear on the same page as the organic – or natural – search engine results for the keywords you specify. Search engines distinguish the ads from organic search results by labeling them as “sponsored links” or “advertising.” They also set them apart in a separate location: in a sidebar, or at the top of the results page, or both.
You can’t guarantee a website’s placement in natural search results. But you can guarantee that a PPC ad will appear next to search terms that are relevant to the products and services you offer. For example, a page of search results for the term “diabetes” could carry PPC ads for shoes and inserts designed for diabetics.
Just as with search engine optimization, the goal of PPC ads is to attract people to your website
at the moment when they’re viewing content related to the products or services you sell.
SEO vs. PPC: Which is the best investment?
Working to get your website high in search engine results, while also buying ads next to relevant content, can dramatically boost your brand presence. People seeking what you sell have another chance to notice your site, and people who search on several of your keywords will get used to your presence. That reinforces awareness of your brand, and makes it more likely that people will click on both your organic listings and paid ads.
PPC can also help drive traffic to a new site that hasn’t yet gained good organic rankings. It can be an effective strategy for generating visits and therefore, pushing your site higher more quickly. Of course, a site that’s not well optimized for search engines will never rank as high as a properly optimized site.
The main difference between PPC and SEO is when you pay. If you employ a professional SEO agency to optimize your site, the up-front costs can be higher than the monthly cost of a PPC campaign. You pay an SEO agency for its work before you see results, while you pay for PPC ads only when someone clicks.
Over the long term, SEO can be a more cost-effective strategy than relying exclusively on PPC. The costs of optimization diminish over time, because once a site is properly optimized, the cost of keeping up with keyword research and making appropriate changes to the site is fairly low.
On the other hand, PPC ads are an ongoing cost that doesn't diminish. The ads are effective because they appear along with search results, reaching people who have an immediate interest in what you sell. But they do have to be there to be effective -- the fact that you had ads last month doesn’t help you this month. Ad costs can also rise if competition for specific keywords heats up.
Another factor to consider: Organic search listings get 75 percent of clicks on a search-results page, while the paid ads get 25 percent of clicks, according to research by search marketing agency Enquiro and research firm MarketingSherpa.
SEO is a great investment for smaller companies
A 2010 MarketingSherpa study found that found that 97 percent of organizations regard SEO as “very” or “somewhat” effective for increasing traffic to their websites. SEO increased lead generation for 93 percent of companies, and increased offline sales revenue for 72 percent. Not surprisingly, SEO is even more effective for companies that sell from their websites: 80 percent of companies reported that their SEO efforts increased online sales revenue.
Small companies – defined by MarketingSherpa as employing fewer than 100 people – get more bang for their SEO buck than larger companies. That’s partly because large companies can often afford advertising and marketing strategies that are beyond the budgets of smaller companies.
A smaller company can often make changes to its website more quickly than larger firms, and test new ways of attracting more site visitors. A small company that gets very savvy about SEO can rank higher on its important keywords than a large company that concentrates its marketing budget on conventional ads.
It shouldn’t surprise anyone that companies getting the best results from SEO tactics are those that treat search marketing as an integral part of their business strategy. Learning to integrate SEO into business strategy takes a bit of time, so it’s good to commit to search marketing for the long term.
Even if you employ an outside agency to do your SEO work, make sure someone in your organization thoroughly understands the theory and tactics of search marketing and optimization. That will help your company fully integrate search into its growth strategy.