Is SEO or PPC Better for Your Business?

Be it a small business or a huge enterprise, choosing the right digital marketing blueprint can be a challenging task. And if not done properly, it may ruin your time, efforts, and money as well. Search Engine Optimization and Pay Per Click Advertising are the two major digital marketing strategies and you need to understand the difference between both of them and choose the right approach for your business. Let’s first understand what is SEO and PPC before deciding what’s better for your business.

What Is Search Engine Optimization?

SEO simply means optimizing your website to rank higher on search engines so your target audience can discover it while searching for keywords/products/services relevant to your industry. This means using a fine blend of technical onsite changes such as tweaking back-end codes, keyword rick onsite content, offsite link building, and much more. 

SEO experts can help you fully optimize your website as per the latest search engine algorithms to make sure it appears in the top results.

What Is Pay Per Click Advertising?

Google Pay Per Click Advertising offers various solutions and Google Ads is one of them. It enables marketers to bid to make their ads appear on top of organic search results when a user searches for specific keywords/products/services. But, you need to pay for every single click on your ad.

You can target a larger audience with PPC as it gives you the freedom to tweak ads at any time while targeting specific customers, demographics, interests, etc.

Pros Of SEO

• SEO experts can help you improve your website’s visibility in a cost-effective way.
• Organic rankings are completely free.
• You can see sustained results for a long time with enhanced rankings.
• The results you obtain in Search Engine Optimization are very similar to posting a 24/7 ad on the web for your potential customers without paying a single penny. 
• SEO experts don’t depend on the bidding by your competitors. Hence, your results are stable.
• It helps you get results that last long term even when you expand your operations and keywords. In PPC, you have to pay for every single click when you grow.
• Organic rankings attract 10 times more visitors than paid results. 

Cons Of SEO

• If you’re a startup or small business, you clearly need to understand that SEO isn’t a magic spell and it takes time.
• You can’t receive traffic from SEO from day one. This is possible with PPC.
• As SEO is vast, it includes a lot of things like link building, technical SEO, content creation, and data analysis. Thus, you need an entire team of SEO specialists who can craft result-driven strategies for your business.
• SEO never completes. It’s an ongoing process. It needs consistency.
• SEO is time-consuming. Also, you need to optimize your site with the latest search engine algorithm while using advanced SEO tools.
• There is no guarantee of higher rankings in SEO but you may gain remarkable results with perseverance and great strategy.

Pros Of PPC

• You get instant results with Pay Per Click Advertising, especially Google Ads. You can see instant website traffic as well as conversions.
• PPC is extremely beneficial for eCommerce websites with multiple products.
• PPC appears even above the organic results. Hence, it’s the first thing the users see after searching on search engines.
• A simply need a mall team of PPC professionals, a copywriter, and a graphic designer to run PPC ad campaigns.
• With eye-catching pictures, attractive text, and phone numbers, it offers more opportunities to attract users’ attention.
• It enables you to target customers using Google Ads, shopping ads, video ads, Gmail ads, etc. SEO doesn’t offer so much variety to tap your customers.
• PPC renders you deep insights on the keywords and ad types that the customer clicks. Hence you can simply tweak your campaigns and elevate your return on ad spent (ROAS).
• It also allows you to display ads based on various factors such as time of the day, customer location, the device they are using, and much more.

Cons Of PPC

• The biggest con of PPC is you need to pay for every single click on your ads. Many times these clicks are so expensive that you may not afford them for certain products. This may result in a low-cost margin.
• Here, the conversion rate is very important as you pay for every click. If the visitors aren’t converting, you are wasting a lot of money on your campaigns.
• Also, the cost clicks depend on the competitor entering into the fray bidding for the same keywords. The bidding price may increase/decrease. It is very unpredictable.
• You need high initial investment to get started with Pay Per Click Advertising Campaigns.

SEO VS PPC – Which One Should I Choose For My Enterprise?

Choosing SEO or PPC is ultimately your call. But it’s worth considering their pros and cons before choosing the one that works best for your business. Today, people search online for products and services before buying them. People mostly use Google to check business reviews. Along with this, they also look for recommendations from influencers and verified customers. Both, Google Ads and SEO can help you get in front of these potential customers. 

Both SEO and PPC have their own benefits but you must be smart enough to choose a strategy that works best for your business. This largely depends on your situation, short-term & long-term goals, or even a hybrid model where you can intelligently select both the digital marketing strategies as per your requirements. The ultimate goal is to boost your website traffic and build a powerful online presence for long-term success.