PPC and SEO are two internet marketing strategies which are both designed to help build traffic for your website. However, the way the two strategies generate traffic is different and this is where internet marketers need to decide which strategy pays better dividends.
Both SEO and PPC can prove successful, however, since both strategies have their pros and cons and since both don’t suit every business’s or individual’s goals and objectives, it remains important that every website owner understands which strategy works best for you.
Let’s first look at how SEO and PPC work before seeing their pros and cons. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimizing and the SEO techniques try to optimize your website so that the search-engines look at it favorably and rank it high for the relevant keywords. The key to success with SEO is the right implementation of SEO techniques which help the website seem user-friendly and reliable to the users for the search-engines. This, at the end of the day, makes the website move up in the rankings and soon enough, the website starts to get traffic whenever people query relevant keywords on the search-engine.
PPC, on the other hand, is quite different to SEO. In PPC, there is no point in optimizing your website; all you need to do is to come up with a good ad as well as the right amount of cash. The ad would be the one which would be displayed by the search-engine to the searchers for the relevant keywords over the organic search results on the SERPs while the time till which the ad will be displayed would depend on the cash you would be ready to spend. Each hit will cost you some money and once your daily bid cap is consumed, the search-engine would stop displaying your advert.
The Pros and Cons of SEO
SEO is probably the most used internet marketing strategy and is probably the most written internet marketing strategy too. The reason: because it comes cheap. You don’t really need to have cash in hand so as to kickstart your SEO campaign. A clear mind, a dedicated approach and good advice is all you need to succeed in SEO or that is what is said at least.
This is the real positive side of SEO. Your ROI is very large if you can get it right. There are two issues though which make SEO a problem. Firstly, you won’t see results for your efforts right away. This means that you will have to consistently work day in and day out in improving your site’s structure, its social media presence and the back-link count and only after around 5-8 months, your website would start to generate organic traffic. Secondly, it may or may not work. Most people don’t get it right as even a single mistake can cost you a lot of rankings on SERPs.
Is PPC Better?
So, this brings us to the question as to whether PPC is any better. Well, there is no definite answer. The problem with PPC is pretty similar. You are just not sure as to whether it would bring you rewards or not as your ad’s content, your sales page and your offers would decide the results. However, one thing is for sure and it is that you will get to know the results on a day-to-day basis. This makes it easier for you to modify your strategy consistently to see what works and what doesn’t, a luxury that isn’t usually available with SEO.
All in all, PPC would cost you more money as compared to SEO but would be better if you want quick results. The best thing would be to continue doing SEO for long-term results and use a few bucks on PPC to gain public attention and hits on a as you need basis.
