SEO vs. PPC. What Is The Best Marketing Strategy For You?

Overview

When thinking of promoting your business using online platforms, two options come to mind:

1. SEO - Search Engine Optimization
2. PPC - Pay Per Click

So, what is the actual difference between the two? Are they that different? What is the right option for my business?

You'll be surprised to know, or not, that there is no definite clear-cut answer.

When should I use SEO?

As its name states, this strategy is targeted at ranking high, organically, on search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.

This means that by using different techniques you'll incorporate in your ideas, content, and websites' backend, you'll meet the SE's requirements for useful, informative, viewer-minded content.

Thus, the SE will boost your website into the first results for the viewers to see, and more visitors will enjoy your content and so forth. 

As you may think already, this process takes time. Sometimes even years. So why should you assume that seemingly Sisyphean route?

Because it is the best long-term strategy for your business. 

As stated above, what the SE's want is for their viewers to get valuable, informative, and share-worthy content.

This is what our business needs - Great value and a robust and long-lasting relationship with your customers.

How does SEO work?

As stated, the basis of SEO is bringing valuable content to the right audience. Therefore, SE's search through your content using "crawlers" that scan your website and index it.

As you may guess, SEO indexing is kept a secret since SE's do not want everyone to know what they are looking for precisely. However, they do outline the basic demands: useful, informative, viewer-minded content.

SEO takes a lot of preparation work in nailing just the right keywords to incorporate in your headlines, text body, tags, etc.

You will also need to make your website seem as credible as possible by getting backlinks from other sources.

Finally, your site should be technically set to have no broken links, optimized images (no large file types, for instance), "crawlebilty" (robot.txt file embedded in your code), and indexation minded.

All the above are aimed at one goal - a fast and credible user experience.

When should I use PPC?

Paying for traffic might seem odd since we just stated that you could get it for free.

So why would you pay for traffic?

Because, as we stated above, SEO-originated traffic takes time, persistence, and getting just the right quality of content for the right audience.

Hence, if you are looking for quick, short-term minded traffic, this could be the option for you.

But why would I want that? 

If you need traffic now; if each day that passes is losing you money (through other means of advertising, or that you have a large inventory housed in a warehouse costing you rent, etc.); or, if quick traffic is a part of your campaign's strategy.

How does PPC work?

PPC is pretty much clear-cut. Auctions are held over search keywords, where the highest bidder gets the top-ranking position.

There is a whole science behind understanding which keyword you should invest your money on, understanding your competitor's PPC money allocation, and so much more.

If you are going to take the PPC path, you should do a lot of research before spending your hard-earned money.

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What tools should I use?

If you want to maximize your strategy, you will have to use different tools to aid you in getting the information you need, such as:

1. Google Analytics (Free) - Understand the entirety of the traffic your website is generating in terms of audience, peak hours, means of user and traffic acquisition, and even conversion rates for your ad and e-commerce campaigns
2. Keywords Everywhere (Free) - Analyze your competitor's pages to pick out the essential keywords they use and incorporate them into your SEO or outbid them in your PPC campaign.
3. SEMRush (Paid) - Get a full view of your website and your competitor's websites in terms of traffic, PPC positions, backlink analytics, etc.

These tools are pretty much mandatory since you will find it difficult to search through your competitor's HTML source code for keyword references in H1 tags, for instance.

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Conclusion

SEO and PPC are different ways of getting traffic.

The ideal marketing strategy for a brand is to incorporate both. Nowadays, content marketing is king. Meaning you can not go far with any brand if you do not offer great value to your consumers, whether you are selling a product, delivering a service, launching a startup, or holding a fundraiser for your NGO.

You should always use SEO. PPC should be the strategy for those pin-point moments in your campaign where you launch a new product, trying to raise awareness for your brand, or just understanding your competitor's strategies (by understanding which keywords are important to them).

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*Background Photo by Robin Pierre on Unsplash