SEO or PPC? That is the big question for business owners. The real answer to this question is, it depends on the business goals with SEO being a waiting game and PPC giving you instant results.
There is a lot more to SEO than just optimising the website and content. The ranking comes down to the authority of the website which is measured by analysing the number and quality of links from other web pages. Another way of getting good ranking on search engines like Google is to keep updating the site with new content.
PPC or Pay Per Click allows businesses to buy ad spaces on search engines like Google and Bing to advertise their business. The ads appears above the non-paid organic search results meaning the site might be top of Google’s search results or page one but the ad would appear before it meaning this would be the first listing the user would see.
Advantages of SEO and PPC
SEO
• If the site eventually makes it to page one this could lead to increased traffic to the site resulting in quality traffic
• SEO favours a more long term strategy
• Users tend to trust sites which appear on the first page, creating brand awareness which also means more exposure for the website.
PPC
• PPC requires you to only pay when a user actually clicks on the website and you can spend as much or as little as you like. This can result in a great return if the user ends up buying the product/service on sale
• PPC campaigns allow you to target a particular audience according demographics like location, language and device. This can make reaching your target audience much easier and quicker than SEO.
• With PPC you can easily view the results and measure the effectiveness of the campaign, if needed you can make changes as the campaign is live. The main reason why businesses use PPC is the fast response and increased traffic to the site compared to SEO resulting in better ROI for the business.
Disadvantages of SEO and PPC
SEO
• The most noticeable drawback when choosing SEO for advertising your business is the time it takes to see results. SEO can be very time consuming for business as they need to check on many things such as any bad back links and keep updating the site with new content. This means it would also take a while to get an good return on investment as users tend to leave the site straight away if they can’t find what they are looking for compared to PPC which takes the user exactly to the product/service they are looking for
• If there are big competitors in the same market you would need a big budget to compete with them to stay on page one. Unlike PPC you do not have control on what happens with SEO as only Google knows and has full control with the algorithms. SEO does not guarantee results even if your business is on page one as 64.6% of people click on Google Ads when they are looking to buy an item online.
PPC
• Pay Per Click campaigns still require time to achieve the best results as you need to keep optimising and improving the campaign to the get the best results. It would take some practice to set up effective campaigns which results in most businesses using specialist agency to manage their campaigns who can monitor the campaign and make any improvements. Using an agency means you get the expertise on creating an ad campaign and getting the best results.
• Clicks from the ad doesn’t always lead to the user purchasing the product or service but has a much better ROI compared to SEO as the user is directed to what they want
• PPC relies upon continual investment to maintain results
Conclusion
SEO or PPC, it really depends on the business goals and what they want from the traffic they gain whether it’s from paid or organic. For e-commerce paid search is more effective as it has a great ROI compared to SEO and draws instant traffic. Hiring a specialist agency can maximise the profit you make through the investment as they have a lot of experience in getting the best results.
With SEO, time is key as it takes a long time before you start seeing a good volume of organic traffic. If there are big businesses in your market they would have a bigger budget meaning you might not be ahead of the competition and would never really see a good ROI unless you run PPC campaigns alongside the SEO.
Overall, PPC presents much more in terms of benefits and this is why we as a digital agency have chosen to develop it as one of our core specialisms. If you’d like to speak to us about PPC as a business solution, please give us a call on 0161 762 4920.
