Let us try to understand the wibbly-wobbly and timmy-wimmy stuff that PPC and SEO are. If you are a startup enthusiast, a budding entrepreneur or a blogger often facing the dilemma over the relevance of SEO or PPC for a business, scroll down! Explore the inside outs, benefits and disadvantages, the pros and cons of deploying them!
First things first.
What’s SEO and PPC?
Thanks to the cheap internet, smartphones and Digital India policy, startup businesses are booming than ever. People are online for both leisure and work. They are searching online and buying online. But where are you? Where do you stand amidst these similar, ‘me-too’ businesses? On average, Google processes over 3.5 billion searches in a day, which are 40,000 search results per second.
In such a scenario, how exactly are you planning to stop Google in its track and take notice of you? That’s when SEO and PPC come into the picture. On the digital marketing front, both SEO and PPC are a part of SEM or Search Engine Marketing; however, their roles cannot be any more diverse in promoting your business.
SEO vs. PPC
SEO or Search Engine Optimisation: SEO brings organic traffic to your website or blog. With the help of content, keywords, link building, meta tags and meta description, SEO is a time-consuming process. It builds up slowly only to give you solid results in a span of a year. At least wait for six months before you start seeing the results. Unlike PPC, SEO is free (apart from the resources that you need to hire for SEO and content) and lasts even when you aren’t doing it as aggressively as you did it at the beginning of online.
PPC or Paid per Click: It is also known as paid search advertising. PPC feature on the first page of a search result and can help you bring traffic when you are fumbling for some sales leads and online reputation. With PPC, you can display ads with relevant keywords with the organic listings. You need to set a budget for PPC beforehand and you can stop it whenever you want. The fee of running a PPC campaign depends on the keywords you choose. A more competitive keyword is charged more. While organic results generated via SEO appear in the middle of a SERP, a PPC ad can be above or below them. The position of PPC ads on the page depends on various factors such as targeted keywords, supporting content, keywords in landing page etc.
PPC campaigns have two types of ads, which are, display network and search network. The former consists of banner ads that you can see on different websites. These ads are usually the products that you have browsed through earlier and target potential customers.
Search network ads are keyword-based ads that you see on the first page of a search engine result. PPC ads are customer-centric and are clicked by people who are genuinely interested in a product or services. The best part is the account is charged only pay-per-click basis and not when the ad is displayed.
Which brings more traffic?
SEO traffic is, of course, any day better than PPC traffic. When you are ranking in the first five positions, you receive continuous traffic without paying to the search engine for the result. You get clicks, the sales and conversion rates with SEO that doesn’t cost you extra.
PPC clicks, however, can cost you but give you guaranteed results. The cost of a PPC campaign may vary as per the keyword and number of clicks you get. Though, the first page rankings, which are otherwise an impossible feat to achieve overnight, can happen with PPC ads. You can get traffic and create a buzz in a relatively shorter span. While you are deploying SEO, the search results can be limited to third or fourth positions, which can be enhanced exponentially with PPC.
Which brings you more sales?
Since PPC ads are keyword-based and highly targeted, a PPC ad is more likely to bring you relevant result in a shorter time span. Especially, when your business is new and all it matters for them is to acknowledge your presence.
Ease of implementation
Unless you have the necessary expertise, you can go terribly wrong with SEO and PPC. While you can just pull the plug on a PPC campaign anytime you want to, there is little you can do with an SEO campaign gone wrong. This is why you need to hire PPC and SEO experts or outsource professional work to digital marketing companies.
Conclusion
Both PPC and SEO are different entities of Search Engine Marketing. However, in order to promote a business, it is important for them to work in tandem. Use PPC to bring customers and get SEO to bring organic results for you in the long run.