What is the difference between SEO and PPC and How to Use them Right?

SEO vs PPC: It’s All About Traffic

Half of the world is online and taking a business online is a great step for its growth journey. The countless digital platforms offer opportunities for businesses to establish and find the right audience in their specific niche. This takes us to the most important question, what does a business need to grow online? Two things; Traffic, and Conversions. Traffic refers to the number of people who visit your website and conversions mean the number of people who become your customers or potential customers. So, your online growth starts with getting qualified traffic that gets more conversions to your website. Many digital marketing tactics help benefit from the power of search engines and gain online visibility. People search for all sorts of things online and you can find your right audience in them. There are two ways in which you can gain more online visibility, generate traffic, or lead your audience to your website through search; Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay-Per-Click Ads (PPC). Although both these digital marketing techniques help in driving traffic to your website, they are two completely different strategies with pros and cons. Deciding which is right for your business can be a pretty difficult choice to make.

What is SEO and How does it Benefit Your Business Online?

Search Engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing try to provide the most relevant results to the users. They have bots that crawl through the web and find new web pages and index them in their directories and rank them for some specific search terms called keywords. The search results that come up below the Ads are organic results that search engines consider most relevant for the search keywords that the user entered. Search engines always rank the pages that provide the best user experience and quality content. Optimizing your websites for several factors that search engines consider when ranking webpages to get higher ranks in the Search Engine Result Page(SERP) is called SEO. There are On-Page, Off-Page, and Technical SEO that help your website to be on top of the SERP organic listings. The advantages of using SEO are:

Cost

SEO doesn’t technically cost you any money. But, you need a good strategy and an in-depth knowledge of how search engines work. Search engines update their algorithm regularly and you have to keep your website updated and optimized with the latest changes. So, you might have to hire an SEO expert but the cost is still less than having long-term paid Ads.

Credibility

Organic results are unpaid results and are more trustworthy. Search engines consider them to be the most relevant results for a particular user’s search intent. People tend to trust organic results over paid ads on SERP.

Brand Awareness

Getting your web pages ranked as top results on SERP for several relevant keywords that are related to your business can give your website more authority. This creates more brand awareness and builds trust.

Traffic

SEO is a long-term digital marketing strategy. It takes time and a lot of effort to get high rankings in SERP. But, with the right strategy and correct mix of keywords you can get steady traffic and growth on your website once it starts showing results. Through local search and SEO, even small businesses can get more traffic cost-effectively.

Sustainability

Unlike paid marketing strategies, the results of SEO do not stop immediately once marketing stops. SEO generates steady traffic and revenue though it takes some time. It gives greater ROI in time and you can manage it even when you have to cut down your expenses in marketing.

What is PPC and How does it Benefit Your Business Online?

PPC or Pay-per-Click is an online Advertising strategy and is a part of Search Engine Marketing(SEM). Search Engines shows paid advertisements on top and bottom of the SERP. relevant to the keywords searched by the user. Every time a user clicks on the link, an amount is paid to the search engines. If no one clicks on your Ads, you don’t have to pay for them. This flexibility is what makes PPC a viable option. Google Ads, Bing Ads, Facebook Ads, etc are popular PPC models.

These advertisements are placed by search engines based on an auction. Businesses can bid on relevant keywords with a cost-per-click(CPC) that they are ready to pay. A Quality Score is calculated based on the relevance of the webpage, quality of landing pages, etc. Search engines rank Ads based on CPC and Quality Score. This means that you can pay a lesser CPC if your quality score is high and get your Ads placed in a prominent position on SERP and vice versa. This makes PPC Ads reliable to people. The Advantages of using PPC for marketing are:

Visibility

Through PPC, you can get a prominent position on the SERP page. You can give relevant information, catchy CTAs, and persuasive marketing messages to people who have searched for something related to your business. The top part of the SERPS are Ads and getting your Ad placed there ensures that people will see your Ad. This will also assist in gaining brand visibility

Targeting

PPC helps you to target people who are looking for your product and services, exactly when they are looking for it. Showing your ads to the right people at the right time can give increased conversions. You can use different types of Ads like Visual Ads, Display Ads, and Shopping Ads. This will also help you in remarketing.

Fast Track ROI

PPC is generally used when you need growth in a shorter window of time and enough money. Almost 40% of people click on Ads displayed on SERP which is a large number. With the right strategy, you show Ads to people who are ready to buy your products and services now and market to them. You can generate higher ROI faster through PPC.

Budget

You can create PPC Ads and bids according to your budget. If you have an optimized website and landing pages you don’t have to spend a lot on PPC Ads. You can also place multiple Ads for Ad categories according to your budget.

Analytics and Tools

You can use several tools and analytics to see how your Ads are performing. You can use techniques like A/B testing to show the better-performing version of an Ad that you have placed. You can change the keywords and also run Ads on specific dates and times.

Should You Invest in SEO or PPC?

PPC can help you get immediate results. It also helps you in multiple stages of the marketing funnel. When promoting short-time offers and sales PPC is the best choice. It gets word about your business to maximum people in a very short time. On the other hand, SEO can give you consistent results and traffic. If you manage to rank high on organic listings on SERP, you get more authority, trust and it will assist in brand building. PPC can be chosen if you want fast results and have a set budget for marketing. But, once the budget runs out, Ad campaigns also stop. SEO is a long-term strategy and can be chosen if you are aiming for sustainable results and brand building. PPC and SEO do not directly affect or influence each other. Running PPC campaigns and getting more traffic does not help SEO. But, you can use data from the PPC campaigns to optimize your SEO strategy. Deciding whether SEO or PPC is right for you depends on your business needs, goals, and the budget that you can set apart for marketing.

Bottomline

SEO and PPC are two of the best digital marketing strategies that can get you more visibility, traffic, conversions, and revenue. You can choose either one of these according to your immediate and long-term business goals and objectives. But, incorporating both in your digital marketing strategy in the right balance is the best policy for online growth. Integrating SEO and PPC and using a holistic approach to marketing can help benefit your business more than treating PPC and SEO as different tactics and using them separately. You can use analytics and tools like Google Ads Keyword Planner to create, track and optimize your SEO strategy. You can get the help of a digital marketing expert to create the ideal strategy that suits your business.