The objective of both PPC (Pay Per Click) and SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is to increase traffic, mainly using Google’s search engine with the end goal of increasing sales. However, they both have some benefits over the other. Ideally, it is recommended that businesses utilise both SEO and PPC marketing. However, if you don’t have the budget for this, then here are eight things to consider when deciding on whether to use SEO or PPC marketing:
1.Optimisation time – PPC can start giving you traffic immediately whereas SEO could take months of optimisation work before you start getting traffic
2.Organic listings are trusted more – Often people ignore PPC listings and scroll down till they see organic listings
3.Only PPC can truly get you on position one – Up to four PPC listings can appear above SEO listings. If appearing on the absolute top of the page on Google is important to you, then you can only get this with PPC advertising.
4.PPC listings will stop as soon as you stop investing in them – PPC listings stop as soon as you stop putting money into Google Ads and all of the hard work that you have done optimising your campaigns will stop benefiting you. With SEO however, if you stop investing in SEO, all the hard work that you have done optimising your SEO will remain, and you should continue to get traffic.
5.You have more power to choose your traffic with PPC – With SEO, you can try to influence Google to rank your website for searches that you want to target. However, with PPC, you can choose the exact keywords that you want to rank for. You can also further tailor the traffic that you target by selecting the age group, gender, location and device, to name a few things.
6.Organic listings can help more with branding and upper-funnel – It may not be financially viable to use PPC to bid on very upper funnel or research-based keywords. However, you can do this with SEO. You can do this with SEO. You can write blog posts and informational pages to educate users when they are very early on in the sales funnel. This improves our brand’s image for when the customer is lower down the sales funnel and more ready to make a purchase.
7.PPC has better A/B testing capabilities – PPC allows for split tests to be created testing ad copy messaging and landing pages. You can use this data to learn what resonates well with your target market and improve your website.
8.Local businesses can benefit from Google’s map pack – Local businesses can use SEO to allow their business’s name, address, phone number and other details to appear on relevant local searches.