SEO vs. PPC: Which one is better for Your Business?

One of the most important common question in Online marketing is “which should I use of SEO or PPC to boost traffic to my website?” The answer to this question, as it really, truly depends on client’s current situation, objectives, and marketplace.

 SEO (Organic Traffic) vs. PPC (Paid Search Advertising)

With regards to boosting traffic to your website, you have two basic options: Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising or search engine optimization (SEO).SEO-Vs -PPC

 As a business, it is sometimes not easy to choose either in Pay Per Click (PPC) or Search Engine Optimization (SEO). PPC refers to paid search advertising for which you pay money each time your ad is clicked on, while SEO refers to the optimization of your website to look higher in search results and gain a larger amount of unpaid, organic traffic. In this article, we will separate PPC and SEO to enable you to choose which is the best fit for your business and marketing budget.

Difference between SEO and PPC

Search engine optimization (SEO) and Pay Per Click (PPC) can both be used in a marketing campaign to boost online traffic and sales. The major difference between SEO and PPC is that traffic coming from organic search is free while traffic generated from Paid search ads is not free (as the name means you have to pay a cost per click). Both are powerful techniques of search engine marketing (SEM).

1. Position in Search Results

With PPC campaigns, you can show your ads highly in search results when users search specific keywords. On the other hand, you have established yourself in the organic search results, your competitors cannot simply pay more to rank above you. It is all about the quality, usability, and credibility of your website.

2. Cost

Cost of SEO is indirect. You cannot pay to place on the first page but you may need to pay for SEO services if you cannot do SEO yourself. With PPC, You pay only when people click on your ad. You can use the Google keyword tool to calculate how much you can pay.

3. Traffic potential

Organic traffic is constant as long as you are ranking in one of the top positions. While PPC ads can get more clicks but this means that you pay more.

4. Conversion

SEO organic traffic is better than other forms of traffic (i.e. social media) but in terms of conversion is not as good as PPC traffic. On the other hand, PPC highly optimized keywords will generate more conversions but will cost more.

5. Ease of use

Neither SEO nor PPC is easy to use but difficult to do if you don’t have the essential knowledge and experience. SEO is a process that takes a lot of time and effort. It may take months or even years to rank well in search engines. On the hand, for getting some good results with PPC and Adwords you either have to take a course or hire a PPC expert to help you or you will lose a few hundred dollars before you understand how it works.

6. Brand Visibility

Organic searches for targeted keywords drive more traffic to your website. It exhibits your business in front of potential clients and drives brand visibility and awareness. With PPC, you can opt to target yourself to the relevant audience. Even if they back out and conduct a brand search, that visibility will pay dividends on your strategy of marketing.

7. Speed of impact

PPC can have an immediate impact on the amount of traffic your website brings in. SEO is much more gradual.

8. Lasting impact

The efforts of SEO are ongoing but PPC is only effective as long as it is being paid for. Once payments stop traffic stops as well.

Final Analysis

• Is SEO better than PPC?
• Is PPC better than SEO?
• Do both SEO and PPC use to gain best results?

Both PPC and SEO are great ways to gain traffic online. You should pick which one to use based on your current situation. You may start up a business and need traffic quick – if that is the case, PPC will be your most logical option. However, if you have a long-term strategy, you might choose to put all your effort into SEO. Saying this, a few promoters tend to use both PPC and SEO to gain best results. It actually depends on what you want to gain and the funds you have to be paid, if any, towards gaining traffic.

But, if we begin to expose what’s underneath, SEO seems to be the clear winner of this question. It is because SEO has a tendency to bring better traffic and trusted leads than PPC. A website showing up on natural search will undoubtedly have more credibility than that of a paid one. There is an increased trust rate on SEO optimized brands than on paid ads.

But don’t trick yourself into thinking that SEO is free. No matter how you slice it, SEO comes at a cost — whether your own time or the money you’ll need to invest in hiring an expert to do the job for you.