- Feb 15, 2011
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SEO Vs PPC
What is SEO?
Search engine optimization is the process of enhancing our website’s visibility to make it rank and gain organic traffic from search engines.
The order of the results that appear on the search engine results page isn't arbitrary. Each search engine takes into account several ranking factors that influence where a webpage gets placed. The goal of an SEO strategy is to create web pages and content that work with the ranking factors of the search engine in order to rise within the SERP rankings.
Are there other search engines besides Google?
Most SEO strategies centre around Google instead of others like Bing and Yahoo! because it holds 92.47% of the search engine market share. Because of this, we need to learn about Google’s 200 ranking factors, technical SEO, link building, content creation, and so much more if we want to appear higher up on the search engine results page.
Pros of SEO
Here are some advantages of SEO:
1. SEO is cheaper in the long run.
SEO need time and money to pay freelancers or agencies, and for SEO tools it’s still low cost than PPC. Organic SEO is very cost-effective compared to a PPC campaign. A properly optimized site can keep a high position in the search results long after a PPC campaign has been turned off.
Organic traffic is also very scalable and cost-effective.
2. We can target different funnel stages with SEO.
Not all of our audience is at the same stage of the sales funnel.
Some are just getting to know our brand at the top of the funnel. And others are already at the bottom of the funnel, ready to pull out their wallets.
With SEO, we can create different content types (blog posts, guides, case studies) that meet each segment of our audience exactly where they are in the sales funnel. This gives our site a better shot at getting visitors to the next step in the funnel each time they browse our content.
3. Search traffic is more stable.
Once we rank on Google, we can begin to plan for and predict free traffic to our website as long as we keep optimizing it.
Another advantage is that there is no off-and-on switch with SEO. With PPC marketing, our website stops appearing on search results once our marketing budget dries up.
4. Organic listings build brand authority.
Appearing constantly on search results for keywords related to our products and services helps build trust and brand authority with our target audience.
It also signifies to Google that we’re an expert on that topic or subject. This can lead to more backlinks from other trusted sites which is a ranking factor that search engines favor strongly.
Cons of SEO
Here are some reasons why we might not love SEO:
1. Search engine algorithms change.
Search engines, especially Google, have changed their algorithms many times over the years. These changes mean that we have to keep a close eye on our marketing strategy and organic results.
2. We need to optimize our website regularly.
Our job doesn’t end when we get our website to rank for target keywords for one month. Over time, we have to regularly optimize our content and web pages so that our site continues to rank.
Optimization include refreshing old articles and removing old/expired links.
3. SEO takes time to show results.
There are several factors affect Google ranks websites, many of which won't be established within the first few weeks or months of launching our site.
4. It requires high-level skills and expertise.
If we’re not hiring a professional, make sure we understand our audience's goals and meet them with quality content in order to optimize our site properly for the search engines.
What is PPC?
PPC, or pay-per-click, is a form of search engine marketing (SEM) where an advertiser pays a publisher (such as Google or Facebook) for each click someone makes on an ad. This model allows business to pay only when consumers interact with their ads. If we use PPC ads, we'll attract people who are interested in our offer and ready to convert.
We may have noticed that some of the top search results are tagged with an "Ad" marker.
PPC ads always appear alongside organic search results. Some business run these search ads for specific marketing campaigns that have a definite start and end date. Others bid on their own brand name as part of their overall marketing strategy. Either way, this method is mainly associated with search engines as advertisers bid on keywords that are relevant to their target markets.
The cost of PPC ads usually depends on our industry and the search volume of the keyword we’re targeting.
PPC advertising can help our business stay competitive in a crowded market and quickly get in front of their target consumers if we don’t have the domain authority to get our site ranking organically on search engines.
Pros of PPC
1. PPC offers quick results.
While it can take months to see results from our SEO strategy, it can take just a few hours to see results from our PPC campaign.
2. PPC ads appear above organic rankings.
When we run a PPC campaign for our target keyword, our website would appear first on the search engine result page. This ranking makes our audience notice us first before scrolling to see other results.
3. PPC allows us to pinpoint our target audience.
While setting up a PPC campaign, we get to choose who we want to target with our ads.
Do we want people from a specific geographic area? Or people of a particular age? Marital status? Or interest? If so, then we should use PPC.
3. We can quickly run A/B tests on a PPC ad.
With a PPC campaign, we can run two different ads simultaneously to measure the one that converts better.
All we have to do is change some ad elements like the ad copy and allow them to run for a period. Depending on the performance, we can decide to either “kill” the Google ads or continue optimization to improve our results.
Cons of PPC
1. PPC ads are expensive.
Without money, we cannot run a PPC campaign.
We have to pay for every link that our audience clicks, meaning once our budget dries up, so does our traffic also down.
Also, a PPC ad can get even more expensive when we’re in a competitive industry like legal or insurance.
2. Lower profit margins.
While a PPC campaign might bring short-term wins, it’ll usually result in lower profit margins. Because PPC is a “pay to play” system, our customer acquisition costs (CAC) would continue to get higher without a significant increase in the prices of our products and services.
3. PPC ads become stale after a while.
We have limited control over our paid ad because of the rule set by ad platforms like Google. As such, our copy might have similar wording to our competitors, which makes it easy for our audience to pass over quickly.
Search engine optimization (SEO) can help our content rank high on search engines, making it more likely that our audience would click and trust our content.
SEO is also more effective for local searches and can grow our online presence for longer. Pay-per-click (PPC), on the other hand, is an acquisition strategy that requires us to spend ad money to get our content in front of an audience when they search for specific keywords online.
SEO vs. PPC: Which is better?
Different situations exist where SEO is better than PPC and vice versa. Some of these situations are:
Use SEO if
• our marketing budget is low.
• We want to build our brand authority.
• We’re looking to maximize our long-term return-on-investment (ROI).
• We want to create content that reaches our audience at different stages of the sales funnel.
Use PPC if
We’d get better results with PPC in situations where:
• We want quick results.
• Our product is novel or first-of-its-kind.
• We’re promoting a time-sensitive offer, like a holiday sale.
• We want to direct our audience to a sales or landing page.
How to Make SEO and PPC Work For us
1. Create retargeting ads.
Did someone visit our site, probably the pricing or check-out page, without buying?
We can easily use a retargeting ad to prompt these visitors, even after they’ve left our site, to come back and make a purchase.
2. Promote website content with social media ads.
If we want our content to rank organically, we can give it a quick boost by promoting it on social media.
Not only do these kinds of ads help with content distribution, but they could potentially help us acquire essential backlinks that’d boost our rankings.
3. Collect data from ads to improve our SEO strategy.
PPC campaigns grant us access to a lot of data — keyword search volumes, keywords our competitors are bidding for, highest converting calls-to-action, and so on.
Aimed with all of this data, we’d be able to create better SEO strategies with less effort.
SEO vs. PPC Statistics
SEO
• Google is responsible for over 92.47% of global web traffic.
• 90.63% of online content gets zero traffic from Google, with only 0.21% getting over 1000 visits per month.
• 35.18% of browser-based Google searches resulted in an organic link click in 2020.
• 99.2% of website pages have less than 100 backlinks.
• Google processes over 5.6 billion searches per day (or 2 trillion searches per year.)
• 64% of marketers actively invest in SEO.
PPC
• The Google Display Network reaches 90% of Internet users worldwide.
• Search advertising spending was $144.8 billion in 2021, compared to $58 billion in 2020.
• The highest average monthly cost-per-click (CPC) in Google Ads search advertising is in the insurance industry at $18.57 per click.
• The cheapest CPC in Google Ads search advertising is in the electronics industry at 77 cents per click.
• The average Facebook Ads Click-Through Rate across all industries is 1.1%.
Thanks for reading
What is SEO?
Search engine optimization is the process of enhancing our website’s visibility to make it rank and gain organic traffic from search engines.
The order of the results that appear on the search engine results page isn't arbitrary. Each search engine takes into account several ranking factors that influence where a webpage gets placed. The goal of an SEO strategy is to create web pages and content that work with the ranking factors of the search engine in order to rise within the SERP rankings.
Are there other search engines besides Google?
Most SEO strategies centre around Google instead of others like Bing and Yahoo! because it holds 92.47% of the search engine market share. Because of this, we need to learn about Google’s 200 ranking factors, technical SEO, link building, content creation, and so much more if we want to appear higher up on the search engine results page.
Pros of SEO
Here are some advantages of SEO:
1. SEO is cheaper in the long run.
SEO need time and money to pay freelancers or agencies, and for SEO tools it’s still low cost than PPC. Organic SEO is very cost-effective compared to a PPC campaign. A properly optimized site can keep a high position in the search results long after a PPC campaign has been turned off.
Organic traffic is also very scalable and cost-effective.
2. We can target different funnel stages with SEO.
Not all of our audience is at the same stage of the sales funnel.
Some are just getting to know our brand at the top of the funnel. And others are already at the bottom of the funnel, ready to pull out their wallets.
With SEO, we can create different content types (blog posts, guides, case studies) that meet each segment of our audience exactly where they are in the sales funnel. This gives our site a better shot at getting visitors to the next step in the funnel each time they browse our content.
3. Search traffic is more stable.
Once we rank on Google, we can begin to plan for and predict free traffic to our website as long as we keep optimizing it.
Another advantage is that there is no off-and-on switch with SEO. With PPC marketing, our website stops appearing on search results once our marketing budget dries up.
4. Organic listings build brand authority.
Appearing constantly on search results for keywords related to our products and services helps build trust and brand authority with our target audience.
It also signifies to Google that we’re an expert on that topic or subject. This can lead to more backlinks from other trusted sites which is a ranking factor that search engines favor strongly.
Cons of SEO
Here are some reasons why we might not love SEO:
1. Search engine algorithms change.
Search engines, especially Google, have changed their algorithms many times over the years. These changes mean that we have to keep a close eye on our marketing strategy and organic results.
2. We need to optimize our website regularly.
Our job doesn’t end when we get our website to rank for target keywords for one month. Over time, we have to regularly optimize our content and web pages so that our site continues to rank.
Optimization include refreshing old articles and removing old/expired links.
3. SEO takes time to show results.
There are several factors affect Google ranks websites, many of which won't be established within the first few weeks or months of launching our site.
4. It requires high-level skills and expertise.
If we’re not hiring a professional, make sure we understand our audience's goals and meet them with quality content in order to optimize our site properly for the search engines.
What is PPC?
PPC, or pay-per-click, is a form of search engine marketing (SEM) where an advertiser pays a publisher (such as Google or Facebook) for each click someone makes on an ad. This model allows business to pay only when consumers interact with their ads. If we use PPC ads, we'll attract people who are interested in our offer and ready to convert.
We may have noticed that some of the top search results are tagged with an "Ad" marker.
PPC ads always appear alongside organic search results. Some business run these search ads for specific marketing campaigns that have a definite start and end date. Others bid on their own brand name as part of their overall marketing strategy. Either way, this method is mainly associated with search engines as advertisers bid on keywords that are relevant to their target markets.
The cost of PPC ads usually depends on our industry and the search volume of the keyword we’re targeting.
PPC advertising can help our business stay competitive in a crowded market and quickly get in front of their target consumers if we don’t have the domain authority to get our site ranking organically on search engines.
Pros of PPC
1. PPC offers quick results.
While it can take months to see results from our SEO strategy, it can take just a few hours to see results from our PPC campaign.
2. PPC ads appear above organic rankings.
When we run a PPC campaign for our target keyword, our website would appear first on the search engine result page. This ranking makes our audience notice us first before scrolling to see other results.
3. PPC allows us to pinpoint our target audience.
While setting up a PPC campaign, we get to choose who we want to target with our ads.
Do we want people from a specific geographic area? Or people of a particular age? Marital status? Or interest? If so, then we should use PPC.
3. We can quickly run A/B tests on a PPC ad.
With a PPC campaign, we can run two different ads simultaneously to measure the one that converts better.
All we have to do is change some ad elements like the ad copy and allow them to run for a period. Depending on the performance, we can decide to either “kill” the Google ads or continue optimization to improve our results.
Cons of PPC
1. PPC ads are expensive.
Without money, we cannot run a PPC campaign.
We have to pay for every link that our audience clicks, meaning once our budget dries up, so does our traffic also down.
Also, a PPC ad can get even more expensive when we’re in a competitive industry like legal or insurance.
2. Lower profit margins.
While a PPC campaign might bring short-term wins, it’ll usually result in lower profit margins. Because PPC is a “pay to play” system, our customer acquisition costs (CAC) would continue to get higher without a significant increase in the prices of our products and services.
3. PPC ads become stale after a while.
We have limited control over our paid ad because of the rule set by ad platforms like Google. As such, our copy might have similar wording to our competitors, which makes it easy for our audience to pass over quickly.
Search engine optimization (SEO) can help our content rank high on search engines, making it more likely that our audience would click and trust our content.
SEO is also more effective for local searches and can grow our online presence for longer. Pay-per-click (PPC), on the other hand, is an acquisition strategy that requires us to spend ad money to get our content in front of an audience when they search for specific keywords online.
SEO vs. PPC: Which is better?
Different situations exist where SEO is better than PPC and vice versa. Some of these situations are:
Use SEO if
• our marketing budget is low.
• We want to build our brand authority.
• We’re looking to maximize our long-term return-on-investment (ROI).
• We want to create content that reaches our audience at different stages of the sales funnel.
Use PPC if
We’d get better results with PPC in situations where:
• We want quick results.
• Our product is novel or first-of-its-kind.
• We’re promoting a time-sensitive offer, like a holiday sale.
• We want to direct our audience to a sales or landing page.
How to Make SEO and PPC Work For us
1. Create retargeting ads.
Did someone visit our site, probably the pricing or check-out page, without buying?
We can easily use a retargeting ad to prompt these visitors, even after they’ve left our site, to come back and make a purchase.
2. Promote website content with social media ads.
If we want our content to rank organically, we can give it a quick boost by promoting it on social media.
Not only do these kinds of ads help with content distribution, but they could potentially help us acquire essential backlinks that’d boost our rankings.
3. Collect data from ads to improve our SEO strategy.
PPC campaigns grant us access to a lot of data — keyword search volumes, keywords our competitors are bidding for, highest converting calls-to-action, and so on.
Aimed with all of this data, we’d be able to create better SEO strategies with less effort.
SEO vs. PPC Statistics
SEO
• Google is responsible for over 92.47% of global web traffic.
• 90.63% of online content gets zero traffic from Google, with only 0.21% getting over 1000 visits per month.
• 35.18% of browser-based Google searches resulted in an organic link click in 2020.
• 99.2% of website pages have less than 100 backlinks.
• Google processes over 5.6 billion searches per day (or 2 trillion searches per year.)
• 64% of marketers actively invest in SEO.
PPC
• The Google Display Network reaches 90% of Internet users worldwide.
• Search advertising spending was $144.8 billion in 2021, compared to $58 billion in 2020.
• The highest average monthly cost-per-click (CPC) in Google Ads search advertising is in the insurance industry at $18.57 per click.
• The cheapest CPC in Google Ads search advertising is in the electronics industry at 77 cents per click.
• The average Facebook Ads Click-Through Rate across all industries is 1.1%.
Thanks for reading
