When you start marketing your online business there is a common confusion you face. Which one is better for your business? Search Engine Optimization(SEO) or Pay Per Click(PPC). The main reason is that SEO gets you traffic from organic search and PPC gets you to traffic from paid search. That is why you don’t know which one to choose.
There are many reasons why we can not say which one is better. Because both SEO and PPC have their own importance. But you want to know where to put the efforts that get you more ROI for your business.
Let’s start with the basics
What Is SEO
Basically, SEO is the process of optimizing your website to rank on google search results organically.
To understand the search engine optimization basics, read my Basic SEO guide before scrolling more. If you don’t need it then you have strong knowledge about organic ranking on google search results that can get you traffic for your business.
Is SEO Benefits your Business?
SEO is something that can be used for all businesses to generate traffic on search engines like Google. If you are looking to run a long-term business then search engine optimization is a crucial part of your marketing strategy. But that doesn’t mean SEO has no drawbacks so let’s look at SEO Pros and Cons.
Understand the SEO pros and cons so you can choose the perfect marketing strategy for your business.
SEO Pros
There are many benefits of SEO but I have listed the main points here for you. Let’s see how SEO helps your business
Boost Your Credibility
When any website ranks first on a search result that means that website is highly trustworthy with high-quality content. And this thing you can only do with SEO, it optimizes your website content and structure. Other than that it takes care of internal linking and external linking with technical issues like page load speed and more. Perfect keyword research, helps you to reach your audience.
Cost Effective
SEO is one of the cheapest ways of marketing that grows your brand without any limits. You don’t have to pay for any organic tariffs you get them from SEO. An SEO Basic guide can help you to understand the SEO and you can perform it by yourself. You don’t have to go for the SEO agency until you have a big budget for your business. It is more cost-effective than PPC.
Organic result
SEO brings you an organic result which is one of the best things in marketing. It’s like mouth marketing, you never paid those people to tell others about your business but they still do. You never paid google to rank your page on top but still, it’s ranking on the top. This happens because of SEO, you make Google understand that your content is helpful and user-friendly that solves searchers’ problems.
Long Term Results
A perfect process of SEO can bring you long-term results for your business. PPC campaign gives you instant results but only when you pay for them. The efforts that you are putting from months will pay you off with great engagement. Consistency in search results can help you to increase your brand awareness for search engines and visitors. It grows loyalty in customers.
SEO Cons
SEO is good for your business but that doesn’t mean it has no drawbacks for your business. Let’s see the Cons of SEO.
SEO takes time
SEO takes too much time to rank your website on google search results. A study finds out that only 22% of pages rank in the top 10 results within a year. If you are looking for an instant result then only SEO is not an option for you. But that doesn’t mean you have no requirement for SEO anymore, SEO is the basic exercise to make your website understandable to google. So if you are a beginner in online business then start SEO today.
It takes Consistency
Yes, SEO requires consistency. You can post your one blog today and don’t know when to publish the next one. If you want to overtake the top brands then you need to post regular content and optimize your old content and stay updated with the new update from google.
Your content must be Unique
Google tells us every time in its updates that our content must be unique, not pilgrims’ content. You have to always care about what you are posting and how you are posting it on google. Trying to do things that help you rank faster can penalize your website. Because you are trying to break the google algorithm and once your website gets penalized by Google it’s not easy to recover.
It requires skills
A basic SEO anybody can do and learning it from the internet looks very easy. But when applying it in a live project then you understand the actual process. When you apply it practically then you know which strategy is good for your business and more. So it requires skills that know the process of SEO and understand the Google algorithm very well.
What is Pay Per Click(PPC)
Pay Per Click includes all paid ads like Facebook ads and Google ads. Pay Per Click is when you create an ad campaign and get charged each time somebody clicks on that ad. There are different types of ads including search ads and video ads. PPC helps you to get on the top of Google search results. It gives you instant results but this instant result is not for free.
Is PPC Benefits your Business?
PPC has a fair deal, which means when you pay then you will get results. So you create a PPC campaign for your business and you pay for the popular keywords that your searchers are searching for. Other than that you get instant results for your business but that doesn’t mean the PPC is the best option for you.
Understand the PPC pros and cons so you can choose the perfect marketing strategy for your business.
PPC Pros
There are many benefits to using PPC but I have listed the main points here for you. Let’s see how PPC helps your business
Instant result
PPC is speedy, you started getting the resulting form the same day of your campaign setup. In SEO you can not get the result on the same day. For this, you need to create an attractive landing page so you can tell your searchers that you can solve their problems. Because it gives you instant results that means you have to prepare for the next step for your leads.
Guaranteed top rank
If you put the highest bid for a particular keyword then you will run on the top. Yes, in a PPC campaign the higher you can pay higher you will rank. It’s like a give-and-take relationship between two people. You can highlight the contact information on the search result ads for a higher conversion rate.
Audience Targeting
The best part of PPC is you can target the audience according to your requirement. Even you can categorize them as their location and interest. You are open to targeting people with their demographically, and geographically, interests, and more. This feature of PPC ads helps you to save time and effort to reach your target audience and increase ROI for your business.
Visual Product Ads
If your business is a product based then PPC has a great advantage for you, visual shopping ads. Google gives you the option of visual shopping ads where your customers can see the product picture before clicking on it. These ads improve the click-throw rate for your business and you can not create this feature with search engine optimization.
Marketing Research
Pay Per Click ads gives you all data to research your business without any restriction. You can easily determine what keywords are working for you or which are not giving you any conversion. And the best part about PPC ads is you will get all this data in very little time. You can even create a survey campaign for new product lunch feedback with PPC.
PPC Cons
PPC gives you instant results but it has some side effects.
You have to Pay
Yes, the biggest disadvantage of pay-per-click is you have to pay to use it. It’s not like SEO which only requires your effort and consistency. You have to set a good amount of budget for your marketing strategy if you are going to use PPC ads. It depends on which keyword you are bidding on, high traffic keywords will cost you more money. But with a great Google AdWords strategy, you can create a positive ROI so it’s fine using PPC ads if you are an expert you can hire someone to do it for you.
Need to Keep Investing
You need to keep creating new ads campaign on a consistent basis because if ads stop your sale will stop. You need to keep investing in every ad to drive traffic for your business. That is why doing SEO parallel with PPC is the best option for any business.
It is tricky
Researching for a PPC campaign requires great knowledge or your money will become wasted. It takes skills to optimize keywords that you have to add to the negative keywords list, how bids work, and much more work that you have to do for a successful campaign.
PPC can lose Effectiveness
You need to keep updating your ads to make people click on them. Ad blindness is a term we use for PPC ads. It happens when a user knows this is an ad and moves from it. So creating an effective ad is very important that can attract your audience.
SEO and PPC
The best option is to use both of them together for your business because SEO and PPC create magic together. As we discuss above Only a PPC campaign makes you keep investing money in it and Only SEO can take much longer time to get results. But both, they complete each other.
If you have just started an online business then start doing SEO on your website. To get instant results create a PPC campaign and use its data for the SEO process. SEO helps you to be in a long run and PPC can create awareness about your business.
