Nowadays, most people will go through your business website first rather than approaching your business directly. In this competitive digital world, it is not easy to stand out from your competitors. When you need to boost website traffic, you’ve to depend on online marketing options. SEO (search engine optimization) and PPC (pay-per-click) are the two major marketing strategies used by businesses today to attract traffic. It is not easy to choose from the two strategies or to decide which one is suitable for you.
Which of these should be your choice? As both SEO and PPC are effective in driving traffic, you may be in a dilemma to choose one. You can select any of these or both based on your time, budget, and requirements. If you’re not interested in spending money, SEO is the best choice. If you’re eager to get fast results and have enough money to pay, then PPC is suitable for your business. You can use both strategies if you’re willing to invest a limited amount of money.
To decide on which kind of internet marketing strategy is good for your business, you have to understand the basics of both strategies. You have to know the advantages and disadvantages of both to select the favorable one. Both SEO and PPC are different from each other in their purpose and you have to pick one that better suits your business.
Search Engine Optimization
Search engine optimization is growing because people are trying to implement new and unique ways to get traffic to their website. Your site ranking in a search engine is affected by a lot of factors such as Page Rank, link popularity, and so forth. SEO considers all these factors and change them accordingly so that you can get better rankings in search engines. Whenever a visitor searches for keywords, only a well-marketed and optimized website can be listed at the top of the search engine results.
Cost-effective
One of the major benefits of SEO marketing is that you don’t have to spend money to click on your link as website traffic received through SEO is completely free.
Visibility
When potential customers search for targeted keywords, your site’s link appears before them. The visibility of your site in search engines helps your business to gain a brand image.
Credibility
Organic search results of your business help you to gain the trust of visitors. It also increases the credibility of the business. Organic results also allow you to enjoy improved ROI (Return on Investment).
Long-term
Unlike PPC, organic traffic is not going to vanish in the air once you stop pouring money. Your business will generate comparatively more clicks (CTR) than paid marketing.
The major disadvantage of SEO is that the search engine algorithms change unexpectedly. When the algorithm changes, your site may lose rankings overnight.
Pay-per-Click
How does PPC differ from SEO? Is paid marketing good for your business?
Pay-per-click is an advertisement given by you on a search engine that charges you when a potential visitor clicks on your ad each time. The advertiser who has the highest bids per click will come first on the list and such listings are called PPC listings. Google AdWords, Facebook advertising, and Bing ads are the popular pay-per-click advertising platforms.
Faster results
The rankings, results, and traffic of PPC can be predicted and the outcome is faster than search engine optimization. PPC is the most popular way of advertising while considering the low cost than other advertising strategies. Once you get the approval of your PPC campaign, from that moment onwards you’ll find visitors pouring in. Instantaneous traffic can be enjoyed through this advertising.
Less time and energy
You can secure a high page ranking in search engines through PPC without any hard work, but hard work is required in SEO such as posting links, content creation, finding link partners, etc. PPC also has the advantage that your listing can be seen on the search engine whenever you like, unlike SEO. Nowadays, the market is becoming competitive and the popularity of PPC is growing.
Budget
You can decide on your budget. You’ll receive traffic depending on the money you’re spending.
The major disadvantage of this strategy is that even though it costs you less than other advertising methods, you should spend money based on the traffic requirements. You should spend more money for more traffic to your site. A layman cannot invest much as every click results in losing money. A higher budget provides you with more people for bidding as seen in auctions. The cost also depends on the geographical areas targeted by your business.
Final Thoughts
The main advantage of SEO is that it does not work on cost-per-click. Unpredictable traffic and the need for hard work are the major disadvantages of SEO. You’ve to wait patiently to enjoy the desired results through search engine optimization. Search engines change algorithms constantly and this makes you work hard to adapt to the changes. Search engines do not list novel sites immediately, so SEO works slower than PPC.
The results reaped through PPC t is based on the money you can spend, time you have, and ROI. The effectiveness of the site can also be tested using PPC. PPC is the best marketing strategy for short-term results and SEO can be used for long-term results.