Choosing the right way to effectively spend your time, energy and money on digital marketing can be a challenge.
You’re excited to get your business or service set up so you know it’s important to have a kick-ass website that will generate more traffic than Beijing at rush hour. So if you’re one of these new entrepreneurs, you’ve probably already asked yourself: To SEO or PPC? That is the question.
As with all important, life-changing questions, the answer isn’t a simple one. Let’s take a quick look at the difference between the two marketing strategies to find out which one will work best for your website.
First of all, What is SEO and why is it Important?
If you’ve already asked this question, please, PLEASE, hire a digital marketing firm. Don't bother creating a website if it'll only disappear down the black hole of the internet. Essentially, Search Engine Optimization is a set of rules you apply to your website content that allows search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo to rank your website on their results page.
The more optimized your website, the higher you will rank, and the more traffic your site will get (and the happier you’ll be). Optimization isn’t just about finding those juicy keywords and peppering them all over your website or blog. Search engines are intelligent machines designed to understand not only what we’re looking for on a results page but also why we click on certain things and tend to ignore text right beside it.
Search engines give higher ranking to SEO content that is:
- Well-written
- Concise
- Authoritative
- Frequent (in terms of blog posting)
- Appealing to readers trained to scan through pages to find exactly what they’re looking for in just a couple of seconds.
Therefore, how you present your content also makes a difference.
In the long run, SEO pays for itself. Just think about your own interactions with search engines. How many times have you even bothered clicking on the second page? Search Engine Optimization is designed to help the user find exactly what they’re looking for immediately. Therefore, users have grown to trust the top results.
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The exact opposite response Google is looking for[/caption]
How Does PPC fit into all of this?
Pay-per-click is essentially the fast pass at Six Flags. It enables instant traffic to your new website without having to build up your ranking organically. It’s effective but expensive, which is why it’s a really useful tool for new companies that really need clicks to their website.
So why doesn’t everyone get on board with PPC?
For starters, you pay for your targeted keyword to show up on the homepage of a search engine, which means that SEO is still necessary. Secondly, SEO generates more long-term traffic>. Sure, it takes time, but users tend to trust and respond better to organic search results than paid-for results, for the same reason we don’t even pay attention to YouTube ads while we wait for the “Skip Ad” button to show up on the screen.
In the long run, PPC works much better under specific circumstances:
- It can get the ball rolling, traffic wise. By showing up on the front page, there is clearly immediate exposure to your site.
- PPC ads show up on the front page faster. A PPC ad can show up on the front page of a search engine in a day, while organic search engine results take time.
- It can target users looking for a specific product. PPC tends to be more effective on users searching for a specific item than a service.
So Which One is Better? SEO or PPC?
In case you haven’t been paying attention, the answer isn’t so simple. Both are effective tools to help boost your search engine result ranking. However, your website will not survive without proper SEO. First of all, PPC is so much more expensive, but SEO is five times more effective.
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Aww...way to go SEO![/caption]
If you have the resources and you want to launch your new site with all cylinders firing, why not employ both marketing strategies? Think of both strategies like a race between the tortoise and the hare. The hare is quick out the gate, while the tortoise takes its time. And while both competitors reach the finish line, it's the slow and steady tortoise that wins the race.
Interested in driving traffic to your website? Your future clients are out there looking for you! Let them find you.
Contact us to discuss your website's SEO or PPC needs.
