SEO vs PPC: What’s the Difference?

seo vs ppc

Soon there will be over 2 billion active websites across the internet.

That’s a lot of competition no matter what industry you’re in. But, with the right digital marketing strategy, you can reach your target customers.

If you’re not sure if you should use SEO vs PPC, this article is for you. I’m going to break down what these terms and show you what you need to do to get more leads and sales through your website.

Keep reading to find out more!

What is SEO?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. And, in simple terms, it refers to optimizing your website or a blog post to make it easier for search engines to find and bring in organic traffic to your site in return.

SEO Pros:

  • Free if you do it yourself
  • People trust search results more than ads
  • Organic traffic has better engagement
  • And, even if you hire an agency to do SEO for your website, organic traffic is cost effective

SEO Cons:

Content marketing has become crucial part of Seach Engine Optimization in recent years. Submitting the same piece of contents to multiple websites to build links is simply useless today. This is the reason, most companies use content marketing for SEO today. This strategy is great, but it can also be time-consuming when doing it yourself or expensive if you pay someone else to create content for your site.

What is PPC?

PPC stands for Pay-Per-Click. It’s a type of advertising where you pay a set amount every time someone clicks on your ad. This helps bring in traffic for certain keywords by displaying your ad at the top of search results.

PPC Pros:

  • Places you at the top of search results in no time
  • Improved brand visibility
  • Makes it easy to do split marketing tests

PPC Cons:

  • Requires constant investment to keep running
  • Needs the expertise to work with campaigns

PPC is far cheaper than traditional advertising options like ads on TV, Radio or in print magazines, newspapers etc..  It can be quite lucrative if done right. Creating a good strategy for PPC can take time and money, but most people agree that it’s worth it once you start seeing more targeted leads.

SEO Vs PPC

So, which should you do? SEO or PPC? After all, they both have pros and cons. The truth is, you should be doing both.

As the modern users’ behavior online is changing like never before, your marketing strategies need to be aligned accordingly, or else you may be lagging behind. Today, no single marketing channel or platform is self-sufficient. Your potential customers hop from one channel and platform to another on their path to purchase.

Somebody searching for a laptop model online today on Google search may end buying it after seeing an ad on Facebook, Instagram, Gmail, YouTube or anywhere else. All these interactions of users are basically the touchpoints for you as a business to address. The more touchpoints you are available at, the better the impact of your marketing will be.

It all makes it important for businesses to adopt an OmniChannel marketing strategy. A marketing strategy that is not confined or limited to just one channel of the platform. I am sure you know what I am talking about.

Coming back to SEO, it provides a solid foundation for your website and is a great long-term strategy for getting organic traffic. It can take months to build up enough high-quality content to get the amount of traffic you want. But it has the worth.

An intelligent approach is to invest in both SEO and PPC. While you’re working on building up organic traffic, you should also be running PPC campaigns to get targeted traffic showing ads to relevant people online. You can set a specific budget for this so you can spend exactly what you want on this marketing technique.

By putting these two strategies together, you can make your business self-sustainable quickly.

Need help with SEO or PPC?

Now you know the differences between SEO vs PPC. As you can see, both are integral parts of an effective digital marketing strategy.

If you’re ready to jump into any of the two or both, let me help. I have years of experience in different forms of digital marketing and can help you get your marketing campaigns started off right.

Contact me today for more information.

Share this post
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Email