PPC and SEO are two internet marketing strategies 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 essential 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 that help the website seem user-friendly and reliable to 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 from SEO. In PPC, there is no point in optimizing your website; all you need to do is come up with a good ad and the right amount of cash.
The ad would be the one that 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 will stop displaying your advert.
The Pros and Cons of SEO
SEO is probably the most used internet marketing strategy and probably the most written internet marketing strategy. The reason: because it comes cheap. You don’t need to have cash in hand to kickstart your SEO campaign. A clear mind, a dedicated approach, and good advice are 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 huge 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.
Secondly, it may or may not work. This means that you will have to work day inconsistently and day out to improve your site’s structure, social media presence, and back-link count, and only after around 5-8 months, your website would start to generate organic traffic. Most people don’t get it right, as even a single mistake can cost you many SERPs rankings.
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 unsure 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: 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 SEO for long-term results and use a few bucks on PPC to gain public attention and hits on an as-you-need basis.
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