Websites considering online marketing and promotion often have to choose between Paid Advertising methods (PPC, Pay-Per-Click) and Organic methods (SEO, Search Engine Optimization). Both these methods are important forms of promoting a website on the search engines and can drive targeted traffic and customers to websites directly from the search engines.
Online marketing methods are adopted by companies and businesses who want to explore the web as a marketing medium, along with other traditional forms of marketing and advertising, including print advertising, billboards, and radio or television ads. Both PPC and SEO have their advantages and disadvantages, which businesses need to understand before they start their online marketing campaign.
Need for SEO and PPC
SEO and PPC are methods of promoting a website on the Search Engines for target keywords and phrases. The client focuses on getting his / her website on the first page of the search results through SEO and PPC. SEO helps in gaining natural search engine listings and are completely un-biased. A website owner cannot pay to achieve high rankings in the Organic SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).
PPC, on the other hand, focuses on paid placement on the search engines, to get listed in the Sponsored Results displayed on the top and right of the search results when a user queries a search term.
Both SEO and PPC improve the amount of traffic coming to a website which helps increase sales and revenue from the website or business. Time and budget are two of the most important reasons for businesses to choose between them. Using both techniques together can provide a very powerful marketing strategy for any online business. Each method has its own pros and cons which should be considered by business owners before they start their online promotion.
SEO
Search Engine Optimization refers to the natural or organic search results which get displayed on the SERPs. It has its advantages and disadvantages which are discussed below:
SEO Pros
Long Lasting - Organic Search Results take a long time, patience and hard work to achieve, but the effects of SEO are long lasting and at times permanent. This means that once you optimize your site, you can benefit from it for a long time.
Users find them reliable, and they have a higher click through - According to several studies, users click on Organic Search Results more as compared to Sponsored links displayed around the natural search results. This is because of the trust gained for organic results, as they provide more information to users as compared to Sponsored Results.
Completely un-biased - Since search engine rankings are completely natural, they are also completely un-biased as no website can pay to achieve high rankings on the search engines. Search Engines use complex ranking algorithms to rank websites. Therefore only quality websites which ful-fill the search engine ranking criteria make it to the top of the Search Results.
Only serious sites make it to the top - Achieving high search engine rankings on the Search Engines can be a difficult task, as there is a lot of competition on the Search Engines, especially for competitive keywords. Therefore, only very serious sites, which provide unique and useful information to the users, make it to the top of the search engines.
Helps to gain trust - Websites that make it to the top of the Search Engine Result Pages gain trust of their readers and often have a large number of repeat customers. This trust is gained over a period of several years due to their hard work and efforts.
SEO Cons
Time consuming - Obtaining high search engine rankings is a tedious and time consuming task. It requires a lot of patience and hard work to achieve top rankings, especially for competitive keywords. Completely new websites often have to wait for a year to achieve rankings on the search engines.
For a website to rank high in the Search Engines, it needs links and content, which need to be obtained and added at a regular basis.
You need to be careful and avoid all shady techniques - Search Engine Optimization can be tricky as well. Often webmasters deploy shady techniques to gain rankings on the search engines quickly. Sometimes, getting links too quickly can get a website penalized on the Search Engines. Therefore achieving high rankings on the Search Engines should be done carefully to avoid any penalties.
PPC
Pay Per Click refers to paid placement on the search engines where advertisers have to pay a certain amount to rank high in the sponsored search results. As compared to Organic Search Engine Rankings, PPC has its own pros and cons. These are outlined below.
PPC Pros
Immediate Results - With PPC, you can achieve almost immediate results on the Search Engines. Paid Advertising allows you to drive instant traffic to a website, without having to wait for months for your website to creep up the search engine rankings. Using appropriate keywords, you can drive targeted traffic to your website to help improves sales and revenue from your online business.
This advantage makes PPC an important option when advertisers have to promote special deals which are run for a short period of time. New websites can also be promoted quickly using this approach.
Gives you complete control - PPC advertising gives you exact control on your website position on the paid listings. Your ad position depends on the amount of price you are willing to bid on the Search Engines. Therefore, by biding a higher price, you can make your ad display on top of your competitor ad. With Organic Search Engine Rankings, competition gets very tough in the top 5 positions, and getting to number 1 can be difficult.
PPC also allows you to control your budget. You only pay for the number of clicks you get from the Search Engines. If you think you are going over your budget, you can instantly stop your campaign.
Gives you time to test - PPC allows you to test and re-test your campaign and the statistics provided for PPC campaigns can help you improve your Ads. Testing and improving can help increase the amount of traffic you receive from the search engines.
PPC Cons
Expensive - Cost Per Click Advertising can be expensive as some keywords have very high bid rates. Due to the rise in competition pay per click costs have increased drastically. In other cases, some advertisers do not carry out proper keyword research, which causes them to target too broad keywords. Single and broad keywords do not convert well and are very costly. They can exhaust your budget with a few clicks, and wont get you targeted traffic either.
Click Fraud - One of the biggest disadvantages of PPC advertising is that you can be a victim of Click Fraud. Although most PPC tools provide click fraud detection ability, they are not always 100% accurate. Click fraud victims can lose a large part of their budget without even realizing where the problem occurred, if proper tracking is not done.
Both PPC and SEO can work together to help improve the online presence of a website and the business a website gets from an online presence. With PPC, you can exactly control your campaign from beginning to the end, and track your Return on Investment clearly. However, with SEO you can not track the exact benefits of a campaign, as you keep seeing results from your SEO efforts long after you stop work on your site.
July 11th, 2008 at 7:52 am
[…] Go to the author’s original blog: Search Engine Optimization vs. Pay Per Click Advertising […]
July 11th, 2008 at 11:02 pm
PPC Cons - Expensive?
I dont agree with this.. Paid campaigns can be successfyl if they are managed professionally..