Many internet marketers are in a quandary about which search engine marketing (SEM) method they should use, SEO or PPC, to promote their web sites. There are those who believe that SEO is better and there are those who prefer PPC. It’s an ongoing debate between the two camps. But the truth is that there is no one-size-fits-all in SEM. What is better for an individual depends on his needs and goals, as well as his particular situation. One will need to explore the advantages and disadvantages of each option in order to know which is a better fit.
The Advantages of Search Engine Optimization
With SEO, your web pages would get listed on the search engine results pages, in organic search results. Clicks on organic search results are free; you do not have to pay whenever someone clicks on your SERPs listing. Of course, this does not mean that SEO is completely free. You do need to invest time and effort, and often some money, too, in order to optimize your website for the search engines. But in most cases, the monies that you would spend towards SEO are much less than what you would need to spend for PPC.
SEO can add value to your website. A site that is well-optimized for the search engines would have useful high quality content that’s highly relevant to the topic of the website and its targeted keywords, lots of quality backlinks, and improved design so that it is user-friendly, among other factors that are looked upon with favor by Google and the rest. Those SEO factors actually make for a better site all around.
SEO can also help you build an authority site. The high quality content that you put in to optimize your web pages, especially if it is comprehensive, will help establish your site’s reputation as an authority on the topic that you cover. Authority sites carry a lot of weight not only with the search engines but also, and especially more so, with actual human users. The SEO elements mentioned above actually make your site more appealing to human readers, thus making them want to come back to your site again and again, as well as recommend your site either through telling others about it or by linking back to your site.
And because of the value and authority that your site can acquire through SEO, it can bring consistent results that last. A good site is a good site, period. If you do your SEO properly and judiciously, your site’s rankings will keep going up and will stay up, bringing along with it the benefits of being ranked highly, that is, more traffic and more conversions.
The Disadvantages of Search Engine Optimization
SEO is labor-intensive. There can be a lot of work to do, including, but not limited to, keyword research, content creation, link-building, social networking, and social bookmarking. Content creation alone will take up a lot of resources. Some have gotten around the time factor by outsourcing the work, but, of course that requires a cash outlay.
Aside from the amount of work involved, SEO requires sustained effort. So that means lots of work on a continual basis. While your SEO activities may be reduced gradually over time as your rankings soar, you will always have to work at it.
You will find that, after doing tons of SEO work, there is no immediate quantifiable result. It will take time for you to see returns for your efforts. SEO is a game of patience and is certainly not for quick results. SEO also does not necessarily bring in easily measurable results in terms of specific numbers of clicks or definite amounts of traffic. You will see results, at times even spectacular results, but it will not be on a quid pro quo basis.
The Advantages of Pay Per Click
In contrast to SEO where results could be slow in coming, PPC brings faster or immediate results. You bid on your chosen keywords, then your ads appear when users search for those keywords, then they click on your ads, and, presto, they are there on your site. How does that come to be? When you search on Google and Bing, the sponsored listings appear at the very top of the search results. On Yahoo! They appear at the right side near the top. Those prominent positions mean that your ads will catch the attention of users fast and thus are more likely to get clicked on.
Specific keywords can be targeted in PPC, thus bringing in highly-targeted traffic. While we also target keywords in SEO, there is no guarantee that we will appear, or where, on the SERPs for those keywords. In PPC, we are more or less assured that our ads will appear as sponsored listings. If you find that you need to change your keywords, you can easily re-target your PPC campaign. It’s just a matter of changing the keywords you are bidding on, and that’s it.
You also do not have to worry about search engine algorithms when you are doing PPC. Just make sure that your PPC landing page meets the quality guidelines and you are all set. This means no laborious efforts to get backlinks to your PPC landing page.
The Disadvantages of PPC
The expense associated with a campaign is the biggest drawback of PPC. Each click on your ad will carry a cost. Competitive keywords which are the most profitable are also the most expensive per click. Managing your expenses can be tricky as the cost of your pay per click campaign can quickly spiral. In other words, PPC can be a money pit, especially if you do not yet exactly know how to handle your campaign.
Choosing keywords for your campaign can also be hard, as it would not really be possible to bid on all that you can think of. While competitive keywords are desirable, they are more costly, as mentioned above. The trick is to find keywords that are competitive enough and still stay within your PPC budget, and this is not as easy as it sounds.
But the most important thing to remember about PPC is that it has no lasting effects as a traffic generation method. The results stop coming in as soon as you stop your campaign. This is because your ads will no longer be displayed.
SEO is more for the long term while PPC is for short term or more immediate results. If you are willing to wait longer for less cost and lasting results, go for SEO. If you want to see fast results for immediate returns while paying more, go for PPC.
SEO plus PPC
It need not be SEO vs PPC for you. It can be SEO plus PPC for optimum traffic generation. Use SEO to get high rankings on the SERPs for your web pages, and use PPC to promote short term projects like product launches and/or limited time offers. Many marketers have successfully used a combination of the two to boost their web pages’ rankings and significantly improve their bottom line.