In the digital marketing world, there are two major marketing paths to attempt – Pay-per-click Ad spend and site improvement for organic SEO.
Which do you center around?
These related (yet clearly extraordinary) showcasing sections frequently run into each other.
We’ve all witnessed this before with articles that claim that PPC is superior to SEO. Or then again, you’ve most likely read articles that attempt to say that PPC is useless and SEO will always be the best advertising strategy for new activity.
Before we begin, let’s give you a summary of what each marketing path is.
PPC means Pay-Per-Click, a type of internet marketing where advertisers pay a fee every time one of their ads is clicked on. Basically, it’s a way of buying visits to your website rather than trying to earn those visits through organic search results. Search Engine advertising such as Google Adwords is one of the most popular types of PPC.
Organic SEO is a type of method that is used to gain a high ranking on a search engine results page. Organic traffic is traffic that comes to your website after someone types in a search phrase in Google and clicks on your organic listing in the search results. This method is not based on buying traffic, rather it is driven by algorithm results on a given search engine such as Google. Sites using SEO as their main driver for traffic should always be growing, expanding, and adapting over time to their audiences’ needs. Organic SEO can be optimized by:
Gaining traffic from PPC advertising and social media is great, but if you combine your organic efforts with PPC, results will be amplified.
Here’s our recommendation:
Both provide positive results to gain traffic and visitors to your business. They just go about achieving the results using different methods.
The type of business that you have may determine which method is best for you.
In this article, we will share the benefits of both techniques and tips that can help your business grow your SEO through organic and PPC marketing.
o Organic traffic is simply king when is comes to delivering relevant traffic. Anyone who types in a keyword search query has a specific intent to do something. If that user lands on your website from that search query, your article is most likely to contain some information to solve their problem.
o Organic traffic is evergreen – meaning that you will constantly have momentum with search engines and maintain traffic. This is in contrast to PPC traffic which requires constant investment. Once you establish search engine visibility, it will serve your business for years after implementation.
o Social media platforms such as Facebook and paid ads like Google Adwords may be great traffic generators, but they do not create long-term customers. Bounce rates are typically much higher and the number of pages that the users visit are mostly much lower. These PPC ads are typically meant to drive traffic to your page or product, not boost overall customer loyalty. If you want users to find your store or service, organic search should be your focus, but keep diversification in mind utilizing PPC for specific launches or traffic needs.
o Costs are very low with Organic SEO. Time, content creation, keyword research are most of the costs involved vs those same items and cost per click for PPC.
o SEO traffic is more likely to convert than other sources of traffic. In fact, search traffic has the best conversion rates for most websites. By positioning yourself on search engines, you are positioning your business to win more conversions.
o SEO is not a myth. You will increase your leads and sales if you offer a viable product or service. One small business generated over $100,000 worth of SEO results in just 5 months.
o Organic SEO has an advantage over PPC as far as clicks. Many users are annoyed by advertisements and tend to skip them. This is most likely due to trust and credibility. By investing in your organic SEO, you will most likely gain more traffic than with PPC using the same targeted keywords.
o SEO does not take a break or stop working. Once you rank high in search engines, your site is constantly being promoted.
o If you dominate your markets search results, it’s much easier to dominate your competitors. Just think if your content appears on the first page of search results for the top keywords in your niche. That type of traffic is king and that is traffic that most likely would have went to your competitors had you not ranked higher than them. Plus, people trust Google and it provides a TON of credibility to your business when you rank high in search results.
o There are over 2 billion people online and 95% of online activities begin on a search engine. 40,000 searches every second and 3.5 billion searches per day show that there is a tremendous amount of opportunities for your business to become found.
There are many benefits of Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising. Powerful cases can be made about the value of Google Adwords, Bing Ads, Facebook Ads, LinkedIn Ads and several others.
To begin with, PPC benefits:
o Through standard reporting tools, you can see high-level performance details such as impressions, clicks, and conversions based on completed goals. Organic search performance is much more difficult to track conversions.
o Combining PPC with a focus on organic SEO can achieve great results. Content marketing is king and has taken over the digital marketing world. Tools such as content plans and calendars are normal in most businesses. Producing unique content to support your customer buying cycle will increase organic search and also grab the attention of traffic that was sent by PPC. These two type of marketing channels work well together as the impressions and opportunities for traffic are often the same audience.
o Targeted PPC campaigns are able to drive relevant traffic to your website. Your ads will be showing for users who are looking for your products and services which means they will be more likely to convert (complete an advertising goal).
The impact that PPC can have on a business or brand is large and can cause major growth over a short period of time if done properly. If your brand is not utilizing PPC, you are missing a huge market of traffic and revenue.
A summary of benefits include:
o PPC can help your business achieve many business and marketing goals. Better brand exposure, ecommerce, or sales pages can easily be targeted. Each of these goals can be easily tracked to determine success and return on investment.
o You can drive traffic up or down based on the flexibility of your budget. For example, you can start small to see if your campaign needs adjusted and then increase the budget once you determine traffic ad spend is optimized. When it comes to PPC there are no budget restrictions. You choose how much to pay for a click and how much money to spend for an ad or campaign. As mentioned above since everything is measurable you can easily analyze if what you are spending is creating a profit or a loss and decide accordingly. As a rule of thumb if a campaign is profitable you can safely spend more money until you reach your maximum ROI.
o Even if you have ignored organic search and content for the past twenty years, you can quickly get up and running with targeted paid traffic. PPC lets you quickly find a wide range of new customers and traffic.
o PPC and Organic SEO for example work seamlessly together
o Targeting traffic through text ads, running ads through retargeting based on users past behaviors, or focusing on specific audience demographics are all ways that you can easily target your audience through PPC
o Traffic Impressions, clicks, and conversion data for each keyword can be used to assist your search engine optimization strategy and content marketing efforts for SEO.
o Let’s say you want to test which product headline or ad copy will perform better in a campaign. What you can easily do is setup different ads in a Google Adwords campaign, run them for a couple of weeks online and analyze the results. The ad with the highest CTR (Click Through Rate) has probably the most attractive copy for users.
In conclusion, while both PPC and Organic SEO marketing can each provide many benefits, your business can grow traffic, brand awareness, generate leads and sales by optimizing both methods. Remember that each marketing method has its place within your business strategy. If you need help with your marketing efforts, please reach out to our team by contacting us.
