SEO vs. Pay Per Click: What Should I do for my business?

Most business owners would like to know whether to buy relevant traffic using Pay Per Click (PPC) or slowly generate a venerable position on SERPs with Search Engine Optimization (SEO). There are really three options –1) SEO only 2) Pay Per Click only 3) Combination of both SEO & PPC. In fact, the last option of using PPC and SEO together works best for most businesses.

From our extensive experience with both, SEO and PPC, we have gained some valuable insight into where and to what extent each of these can be beneficial to digital marketing campaigns. It can help you decide which of these two proven traffic-building methods would be best for your line of business.

PPC Lets You Quickly Gather Data to Perform Analytics

Traffic is a means to attain a high conversion rate. If you want to test your website for features that are leading to maximum conversions, you first need a significant sample of incoming traffic. Buy this traffic with PPC over a short period of time and perform analytics on it to determine what content, functions, pages etc are leading the viewer to convert.

Moreover, if you plan to use SEO in the long term, an initial tryst with PPC can help you decide which keywords are working best for you. SEO takes a lot of time investment, and you don’t want to be shooting in the dark there – PPC can make your SEO campaign better targeted and more reliable.

So, besides the usual keyword planning tools, PPC too will give you some fail-proof knowledge of how to prioritize your keywords.

PPC is Immune to Google’s Regular Algorithm Changes

Google regularly updates their algorithms for determining organic search engine rankings. Unless you are a digital marketing professional predominantly involved in monitoring these changes, it can be difficult for you to keep updating your website to incorporate new SEO ‘rules’. You may end up losing your first page position and in turn business, in case of an algorithm change. On the contrary, while using PPC you can consistently ensure your website’s visibility irrespective of how organic searches are being ranked.

Determine when You Need a Quick Result

Your purpose may be to build a consistent stream of traffic and loyal visitors, but in certain situations, you may want a quick influx of traffic to your website. For example, one occasion that may command quick results is when you are running a promotional offer or a sale on your website. Getting the word out to as many people as possible in as short a timeframe as possible is the key to success to your event – so use PPC to achieve the desired results.

Use SEO for Keywords with Unaffordable CPCs

At Pat’s Marketing, we manage to exceed our clients’ expectations of traffic on their websites without inflating their budgets. In many cases, this means having to make a smart decision between PPC and SEO. For keywords that have a very high CPC(cost-per-click), we focus on search engine optimization instead of putting them in expensive ad results.

SEO can’t work in some case…only PPC does

Seasonal businesses like auto hail repair companies can’t always use SEO. Hail damage repair companies don’t know where to focus on until it hails. So SEO is pointless because by the time you start ranking, hail season is over. PPC is ideal for this scenario.

SEO & PPC are complementary

With Pay Per Click, once people know your brand, you will get more organic brand related traffic to the site. Hence, PPC can lead to more organic traffic.

Realistically speaking Pay Per Click can be expensive and you can only stay on the top so long as your budget permits you to. A good organic position from a well-executed SEO campaign can help you get business while your Pay Per Click gets exhausted so you don’t lose out on the inquiries.

So while both SEO & PPC have their pros & cons, a combination of both would be the best digital marketing strategy for most businesses. If you need a free consult on what works best for your business, please feel free to contact us at 1-888-488-7287.