When it comes to growing your business's online presence, you have a lot of options. Whether you choose to focus on search engine optimization (SEO) or pay-per-click (PPC) advertising will depend largely on your industry, budget, and goals. To help guide you in the decision-making process here's an overview of SEO vs. PPC and what you need to know about each.
SEO: What You Need to Know
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a long-term strategy that involves optimizing your website or content for major search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo in order to improve your organic ranking and visibility.
When it comes to SEO, you must consider your niche and competition. If you sell fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG), SEO will be costly since there are a lot of other strong brands and retailers competing for the same keywords. Determining the right SEO services for your business can be quite tricky. To help you make an informed decision, we've put together a comprehensive article identifying all of the important factors to consider when choosing SEO services. Read it *here* and get started today!
PPC: everything you need to know
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is a way of using search engine advertising to generate clicks to your website, rather than earning those clicks organically. With PPC, you bid on relevant phrases and keywords that are related to your product or service in order to display ads whenever those keywords are searched.
PPC is a great way to generate targeted leads quickly and efficiently; however, it can be expensive. With PPC campaigns, you pay for each click so you need to factor in the cost of each lead when calculating your return on investment (ROI). Additionally, you also need to consider factors like competition, location, and industry when setting up your PPC campaigns.
Pros and Cons of Doing SEO vs Running PPC Ads
Pros and Cons of Doing SEO
Pros of SEO:
SEO is a long-term strategy that helps with organic rankings and visibility.
SEO is scalable, you don’t have to pay for clicks, and you can build your brand over time.
SEO is best for niche markets where competition is low and search volume is high.
You can reach out to cold audiences with engaging content or capture audiences from relevant websites by having backlinks from them.
Cons of SEO:
Be wary of spurious and ambiguous SEO tactics as they could put your website's performance in jeopardy.
SEO might take longer to see results, especially in competitive markets.
Low search volume for certain keywords can make it difficult to rank high organically.
You need to find top-notch SEO experts in order to create a working SEO strategy
Pros and Cons of Running PPC Ads
Pros of PPC ads:
Your ads will be displayed on search engine results pages (SERPs) right away at the top, so you don’t have to wait for organic rankings to kick in.
You only pay when someone clicks on your ad, so you can ensure your ROI.
You can target very specific audiences and quickly evaluate the success of your campaigns.
Cons of PPC ads:
It can be costly, especially in competitive markets.
You have to constantly monitor and adjust campaigns as trends and search engine algorithms change.
PPC ads are not suitable for small businesses with limited budgets.
At the end of the day, it's important to find a strategy that works best for your business based on your goals. The well-rounded strategy will be including both, SEO & PPC, in order to utilize the short-term benefits of PPC advertising and capitalize on long-term SEO results.
When to do SEO, PPC, or both?
When to do SEO?
You are looking for long-term results, and do not want to instantaneously increase traffic
You target keywords with low competition levels. If you have a niche product or service that is not widely searched and has low competition
If you are aiming to secure funding, organic metrics can be a powerful argument in favor of your concept and serve as convincing proof for potential investors.
When to do PPC ads?
You need a quick and direct response in order to generate leads
You are targeting competitive keywords with high search volume
You want to reach out to cold audiences
When to do SEO & PPC?
If you want to gain organic traction, establish a strong presence in your industry, and capture leads for the long haul; both SEO and PPC are your best bet. It's all about finding the optimal balance between these two activities that will yield maximal results!
We have been working on SEO and PPC campaigns for clients across various industries, and have seen great results with this combination. Reach out, and we will generate most of the results for your brand with joint efforts of SEO & PPC ads!
How To Get The Most Out Of Combining SEO & PPC Strategies For Maximum Results
1. Utilise the same keywords for SEO and PPC:
This will allow you to focus on the target audience that is most likely to convert through both channels.
For example, we always divide the keywords list into 2 parts:
long-tailed keywords: relatively small traffic potential and low competition is a primary target for SEO
high-competition keywords with high volumes on which website is not in the top 10 are targeted with PPC for quicker results and testing.
2. Testing with PPC
Run a dynamic PPC campaign after on-page optimization to find new keywords that work for your brand.
Dynamic campaigns serve your website based on the content presented on the page & how well it corresponds to a certain query. With this type of testing, you can see what keywords are relevant for every page & bare sales results. Also, this type of campaign provides a lot of new ideas for SEO content.
3. Review data constantly from both channels
As we have already highlighted, SEO takes time to yield returns whereas PPC is almost instantaneous. Utilize the results from your analytics - for example, if you notice a decline in search volumes on certain keywords it may be wise to reallocate resources away from SEO and towards other strategies.
When your website attains the Top 3 organic rankings for a particular keyword, and you observe that competition is not too stiff, it may be advantageous to pause PPC ads for this keyword in order to channel more funds into other keywords.
4. Beat ads competition
If your SEO results are being crowded out by 3-4 PPC ads, then the smartest thing to do is to keep running those same ads and also strive for top organic rankings. That way, you not only increase visibility but maximize your chances of someone clicking through to your website.
5. Make sure you have high-quality content
No matter what combination of SEO & PPC you choose, high-quality content is the basis for success. It’s a crucial element to maintaining a successful digital marketing strategy and making your website more visible with better rankings in SERPs. Make sure to create specific landing pages that are tailored for every high-volume keyword.
To sum up, no matter what business you are in, it is important to understand how SEO and PPC can be combined to create a synergetic effect that amplifies the visibility of your website in different search engines & drives more leads. Combining SEO and PPC will also help you gain valuable insights from data available from both channels, which can be utilized to further improve your website's ranking and get even better results.
Are you interested in driving the best results for your website with SEO & PPC? Reach out for a free quote!