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Why Is SEO (Not PPC) Still the Best Choice for Your Business?


SEO vs. PPC has always been a topic of debate for marketers. While PPC may yield you instant results, SEO can help you sustain long-term. If you’ve been debating the use of PPC and SEO for your business, then this guide is for you.
As per Google, they are defined as -
In this article, let’s dive deep into the pros and cons of SEO and PPC. We’ll also compare the two and which one you should pick to achieve your business’s goals.

SEO

Search Engine Optimization or SEO is the process of optimizing your website/webpage to rank it higher on search engines such as Google.
SEO helps you to rank on search engines organically. This means that you do not have to pay for ranking on the top positions of Google. Instead, you need to take certain measures that will help you rank organically.
The traffic generated using SEO is free. Search engines such as Google and Bing send users to your site free of cost. But, it is not as simple as it sounds.
There are around 400 million active websites around the world. All these websites are competing to rank on top positions of Google. It is difficult to rank easily and quickly on Google Search Engine Results Page (SERPs.)
Websites take months or a full year to rank on top organic positions of Google. SEO gets even more challenging when you are in a competitive niche. Hundreds of competitors keep working on their SEO to reach on top of SERPs.
It is relatively tougher to attain top positions in the SERPs. But, the results are worth it.
Suppose that you start ranking on top positions of Google. Then you’ll start getting a consistent stream of traffic to your website 24/7.
If you optimize your site for the right keywords, you get highly targeted traffic. This will help you improve conversions and generate more revenue.

Advantages of Using SEO


Let’s look at some of the top advantages of using SEO for your business:

1. SEO is Cheaper

SEO helps you generate free organic traffic for your website. There will be some initial investment. The investment may be in the form of your time if you are creating content and doing SEO for your site.
Or, the investment may be money when you hire freelancers or a digital marketing agency. Even in that case, you would need to spend some amount to get the content and website ready. Once your content and web pages start ranking on Google, the traffic you get will be free.
When you compare that to PPC, there is a massive difference. For example, here’s a picture representing organic traffic to the B2B site.
In the case of PPC, you pay an amount every time a user clicks on your ad. You have to pay even when the user doesn’t convert.
So, PPC turns out to be much more expensive than SEO in the long run. The average PPC across industries ranges anywhere from $1.16 to $6.75! That amounts to a lot of money when compounded over time.
SEO needs initial investments, but after some time, you’ll get 24/7 free traffic. Hence, SEO is a much cheaper option for businesses in the long run.

2. The ROI From SEO is Higher

SEO can be the major contributor to any business’s ROI. SEO sends traffic to websites 24/7. Apart from that, SEO also helps to build trust and authority for a business. Over time, businesses agree that SEO yields the most ROI.
A Search Engine Journal Survey reveals that organic search yields the highest ROI for businesses. 49% of the respondents agreed to this. Clearly depicting higher ROI on organic SEO.
This was in comparison to paid search, social media, and email marketing.
Organic search traffic helps you build brand awareness. Using SEO, you can attract traffic to all the stages of your funnel. Right from awareness, consideration to the decision, SEO attracts all types of users. These factors help you long-term in profitability.
Moreover, as discussed in the previous section, the investment for SEO is comparatively low. Hence, the return on investment that you get from SEO is much higher.

3. SEO Helps You Build Authority And Trust

Did you know that the top 5 organic results get 67.6% of all the clicks? This means that users prefer clicking on organic results to paid results.
This is because Google has taken years to establish itself as a top authoritative search engine. Users blindly deem any top results on Google as trustworthy.
This is why top 3-4 ranking websites receive tremendous Click-Throughs.
This may be because Google has perfected its algorithm over the years. Most of Google's algorithms stress the importance of trust-building. The E-A-T or the Expertise-Authoritativeness-Trustworthiness predominantly ensure this. Hence, users instantly place trust in the top ranking positions of Google.
When it comes to paid ads, users hesitate to click on them. Users recognize and understand that businesses can pay to earn top ad positions on Google. But businesses cannot do this for organic results.
Suppose that your website repeatedly ranks for top positions on Google. Then, the credibility attached to your business will keep improving. Over time, users will view your brand as a thought leader in your niche. This will be extremely helpful for you as it will help you improve brand awareness and attract new customers.

4. You Can Improve Brand Awareness Using SEO

There are 400 million active websites around the world. With the overwhelming number of brands, it is easy to get lost in the crowd. Businesses bombard consumers with marketing pitches from every direction. So, how can you ensure that you stand out as a brand and increase awareness?
Social media may help, but organic social media is also saturated today. It is very difficult to improve your reach organically. Even with paid ads, it has become very difficult to get your target audience’s attention. What can you do that no one has ever done before?
SEO can be of great help in improving your brand awareness. Over the years, Wikipedia has built its brand with SEO and comparatively negligible paid ads.
The top positions on Google are highly coveted. It is quite challenging to reach the top positions. And once you earn it, you become indispensable.
By consistently ranking on Google, you can emerge as a top brand in the niche. Users will start recognizing your brand name more often. They will get familiarized with your products and services.
Through SEO, users will want to learn more about your brand. They might even start recommending you to their friends and family. This kind of brand awareness is difficult to achieve with paid strategies.

5. SEO Helps You Sustain Long-Term

Advertising is a short-term gratification strategy. You run ads and pay for every click. You get ROI from the customers that convert. You cannot sustain solely on PPC for a long time if you are tight on budget.
Compared to that, SEO is a long-term game. You have to put in a lot of effort initially. When you start getting results, you’ll stay there for a long time.
For example, the posts that you created two years ago may rank in the top positions of Google even today. For the record, Backlinko used Skycraper technique in 2016 and it still ranks on the page 1 competing with other known players like SEMRush, Ahrefs, and SEJ by driving a huge traffic.
Such posts will keep generating more visitors and generate revenue for your business. This will happen without any recurring costs. You may have to update the content once in a while. But the investment for that will be relatively low.
Similarly, your current posts and SEO efforts will yield results for years. Suppose you decide to stop advertising or aggressively promoting our offering. Even in that case, Google will send visitors to your website. And many of these website visitors will convert and generate revenue.

6. SEO Helps You Improve the User Experience of Your Website

User experience (UX) is a very important component of any business website. Even if your offering is of the highest quality, it will be a waste without good UX. When consumers have a wide variety of options to choose from, they look for a good user experience.
SEO plays a major role in improving the UX of your website. This is because Google’s main aim is to offer the best possible experience to its users. So, Google only wants to rank websites that offer good UX.
With page experience slated to release in a couple of months, UX will be a vital part of SEO to remain on top.
Therefore, Google’s algorithms highly stress the importance of UX. Google uses UX signals as a predominant ranking factor. This consists of metrics that help to measure the UX that your website offers. UX signals include bounce rate, dwell time<., click-through rate, pogo-sticking, etc.
Suppose that your website navigation, page structure, readability, and content, are not optimized for good UX. In that case, Google will use UX signals to understand your website UX. Eventually, Google will lower your rankings on the Search Engine Results Page (SERPs.)
Therefore, by working on SEO, you’ll automatically improve your website UX. This will result in more website visitors, increased conversions, and increased profitability.

7. SEO Generates Local Customers

If you are a local business, then SEO can be highly beneficial for you. Local SEO is a specific set of techniques that you can use to generate local customers from search engines. This is especially helpful during post-COVID times. As of now, it has become difficult for businesses to generate local leads.
Using local SEO techniques, you can draw highly targeted traffic to your website. Using local SEO, a local business ranks above the other results by featuring in local 3-pack.
NAP consistency and citation building can help local customers discover your business. This way, local customers will ultimately convert.
For example, suppose that you are a plumbing service provider in your locality. Users looking for plumbing services will most likely search for “plumbers near me” on Google.
If you have implemented local SEO strategies, you may rank for this search. Google will provide links to your website and your contact details to the user. This way, you can generate local customers free of cost.
This is especially helpful because around 46% of Google searches are looking for local information. Studies also show that 97% of users learn about a local business online than anywhere else.
Therefore, without local SEO, you are missing out on a lot of local customers. With a few local SEO techniques, you can emerge as a top local business in your locality.

8. SEO Lets You Stay Ahead of Competitors

Irrespective of the niche you are in, there will always be competitors who constantly try to stay ahead. It is very difficult to impact our target audience when many other businesses try to do the same. Hence, standing out from the crowd is vital for building a sustainable business.
SEO can be super-helpful in making you stand out from competitors. Many businesses look for instant gratification and lean more towards PPC. As discussed before, PPC may turn out to be very expensive in the long run.
Moreover, many businesses may give up on SEO because of the uncertainty of results. Suppose that you start working on SEO early on. Then you have a great chance of ranking on top of SERPs within a few months or a year. In such a case, you’ll easily stand out from your competitors. Your target audience will lean more towards your business.
So, with consistent SEO efforts, you can easily beat the competition. You can create better content, improve your value proposition, and get more website visitors. Within no time, you’ll capture the majority of the market share.

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9. SEO Helps You Generate Highly-Qualified Leads

SEO is an inbound marketing strategy. This means that users coming from organic search are discovering and landing on your site on their own. While advertising is an outbound marketing strategy. This means that you are putting in the efforts to reach out to target customers through advertising.
The main difference between these two is that inbound marketing is permission-based.For instance, in the image below, the user hasn’t mentioned the “services,” but we still try to sell “web development services.” If the user clicks and doesn’t buy it, then it's a loss of money. On the other side, organic results will have information along with CTA.
This means that users are willing to come to your site. And they are also coming to your site with specific intent.
The search intent can be informational where the user wants to find some information. The intent can be navigational where the users are looking for your website. Or, it can be transactional where the user wants to purchase a product or service.
You can optimize your website for all these types of intent. This way, only highly qualified leads will visit your website. This improves your chances of conversions. In the case of advertising, you can target customers based on their demographics and interests. But you cannot be sure that the users are interested in your offering.
So, it is evident that SEO helps you generate highly qualified leads. The chances of converting leads generated from SEO are higher.

10. SEO Helps With PR

PR can be pivotal in building brand awareness and gaining visibility as a new business. And SEO can help you build good PR. This is mainly because of link building that is a crucial part of SEO.
Link building is the process of getting links to your website from other domains. The number of backlinks is one of the top-ranking factors considered by Google. This is because the more relevant, high-quality backlinks your website has, the more authoritative it is.
So, SEO needs to get backlinks from top websites and publications in your niche. If you can do PR from world-class magazines like Forbes, Inc, CNN, etc., then you’ll reap a lot of benefits as a brand with natural SEO.
You can also generate backlinks with the process of guest blogging. For this, you have to reach out to such top websites in your niche.
Therefore, with SEO’s help, you get mentions and links from top media publications and influencers in the industry. This automatically contributes to good PR. Suppose that many such high authority websites mention you and add a link to your website. In that case, you’ll get a lot of good PR coverage and improve your brand’s visibility.

11. SEO Ensures the Mobile-Friendliness of Your Website

Did you know that users make more than half of Google searches on mobile devices? This means having a mobile-friendly website is extremely vital for your business. Without a mobile-friendly website, you may lose website visitors and customers.
SEO forces you to focus on the mobile-friendliness and responsiveness of your business website. Google turned to mobile-first indexing for all websites in 2019. There's complete information on Google’s official page about it.
This means Google crawls the mobile version of your website for ranking.
So, for attaining good organic search engine rankings, the mobile-friendliness of your website is a must. Suppose that your website is not readable on mobile or it is not responsive for a device size. In that case, it is essential to fix these issues if you want to rank for organic search results.
So, Google prefers mobile-friendly and responsive websites. By implementing SEO, your website will automatically turn mobile-friendly. This way, you’ll be able to offer better UX to your mobile users. Moreover, you’ll attract more visitors leading to more conversions.

Disadvantages of Using SEO


Here are some of the disadvantages of using SEO :

1. SEO Takes Comparatively More Time to Yield Results

The websites that rank on the top positions of Google have probably put in years of work to get there. This is because SEO takes a lot of time to show results. This is the reason why many websites give up on it easily.
PPC gives instantaneous results as compared to SEO that can take months or even years. With PPC, even a recently started business can bring themselves before the potential audiences.
For SEO, you first need to create content for your website consistently. Creating weekly blog articles and working on on-page SEO takes a lot of time.
Moreover, off-page SEO techniques are also very important for rankings. Techniques like link-building may take a very long time.
You may need to reach out to hundreds of websites to get a few backlinks. Or, you may have to guest post on lots of websites to get a few high-quality backlinks. This is not a process that you can do in a week or even in a few months.
It takes time for Google to start indexing your website and analyzing your link profile. Google also considers users’ behavior to decide your rankings. So, in total, it takes months to get any results with SEO. The timelines are even higher in case you are in a highly competitive niche.

2. Google Algorithm Updates May Lead to Sudden Drop in Rankings

Google comes up with frequent algorithm updates each year. Some of these are minor updates with no significant changes. Once or twice a year, Google comes with a major algorithm update that greatly impacts website rankings.
You can keep a tab on GA updates by checking Search traffic sensors on SEMRush for free, which indicates an update as in the image.
Google comes up with these updates to improve user experience. This includes measures to improve the credibility of Google results. Or, it can also be to ensure that Google only ranks high-quality content.
With such major algorithm updates, many websites from various niches get hit. Sometimes there is an improvement in rankings. But, sometimes, there may be a significant drop in the rankings as well.
This can be harmful to your business. You’ll notice a sudden drop in organic traffic. And, you’ll have to put in efforts again to regain the lost traffic. This is one of the biggest disadvantages of relying on SEO for your traffic.

3. SEO Requires You to Put in Consistent, Strategic Efforts

Though SEO sends free traffic to your website, it takes a lot of consistent effort. About ten years back, simply stuffing keywords could help you rank on the first page of Google. But, today the competition has increased. So, SEO has become much more complex.
SEO highly stresses creating high-quality, up-to-date content. It also stresses the depth of your content. Simply writing 500-word articles does not work today. For ranking on the first page of Google, you need to create consistent content.
Ideally, you should create at least 2 to 4 blog posts per month. You also need to do in-depth research for these articles. Generally, this is what the topmost SEO firms like SEMRush do. They regularly provide quality content to the users to stay on top of the game.
You must cover the topic in-depth with at least 1500 to 2000 words. It is also important to update the old articles with the latest content.
Apart from creating content, you also need to put in strategic efforts. For example, you should do keyword research and optimize your content for these keywords. You should do on-page SEO optimization. You also need to invest in backlink building and other off-page tactics.
Hence, for SEO, you need to put in consistent efforts to get good rankings. Compared to that, for PPC, you can invest money and get results.

4. SEO is Challenging for Competitive Niches

Creating websites and launching online got easier over the years. Hence, the competition today is extremely high. This is especially true for the competitive niches. For such niches, websites have been working on SEO for years.
The top-ranking websites in competitive niches have thousands of pieces of content. They have thousands of backlinks to their website. They also get millions of visitors to their website each month. This is why they always rank on top.
If you are starting in a competitive niche, it may be extremely challenging to rank on the SERP positions. You will need to produce large volumes of content and create thousands of backlinks. Only then do you have chances of ranking on the top three positions of Google!
This can be discouraging to a lot of businesses that are in competitive niches. No matter how hard they try, SEO might seem impossible. For such cases, PPC may come to the rescue.

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5. SEO Has No Guarantee for Results

As mentioned above, SEO takes months or even years to show results. Hence, you need a lot of patience with SEO. But, the biggest problem is that even after consistent efforts, there is no guarantee of results.
Even if you work on SEO for an entire year, no one can guarantee your Google rankings. No one can guarantee the amount of traffic and conversions you’ll get. This is what makes SEO highly unpredictable.
There is no time for trial and error with SEO. You cannot do A/B testing with SEO. It will take you a lot of time to notice any change and make amends. Hence, in the end, all your efforts may even go to waste.
The best you can do is to work with SEO specialists. SEO specialists have worked with websites for years. They know the best ways to optimize your website content to help you get some assurance of results. No one can guarantee you results. But working with SEO specialists increases your chance of ranking higher on Google.

PPC


PPC stands for Pay-Per-Click. PPC is an advertising model where you pay some amount for each click on your ad. Google ads and most of the major social networks work on the PPC advertising model.
PPC is an alternative to SEO. In PPC, you can pay money to get visitors to your website or landing page. In the case of SEO, you can get these visitors for free.
Google ads are the most popular form of PPC. Here, you can bid for ad placements on the ads that come up in SERPs. Whenever you search for a main keyword or term, you’ll notice ads by various companies. The organic search results follow this.
Using the PPC model, you can surpass the organic rankings and get a position on SERPs' top. This way, you do not need to put in the efforts to rank organically.
For creating a PPC campaign, you need to put in a considerable amount of effort. You should start with keyword research and organizing them into different ad groups. You should also set up landing pages and optimize them for conversions.
If your content is valuable to the users, Google will charge a lower amount for each click. This will lead to better profits for your business.

Advantages of Using PPC


Let’s look at some of the top advantages of using PPC for your business :

1. PPC is Relatively Quick to Yield Results

One of the biggest advantages of investing in PPC is that it yields your results instantly. You can head over to any of the PPC platforms and set up the campaigns. Google Adwords is the majorly considered PPC platform, where you can
Once your campaign is live, you’ll start getting sales.
Setting up PPC campaigns does not require much of your time. You can simply create an account, create ads, and bid on the right keywords. Right from the day, you start your PPC campaign. You’ll start getting website visitors.
Your PPC campaigns’ results depend on the quality of your ads and the keywords that you bid. Suppose that you pick the right keywords and have optimized your landing pages. In that case, you’ll start getting visitors right from day one.
With a good offer and an optimized landing page, you’ll also start generating sales instantly. This is not possible with organic strategies such as SEO. In the case of SEO, the implementation takes effort and time. And the results may take months to show.

2. Results From PPC Are More Measurable

Though SEO results are measurable, you may not be able to track your landing pages' performance accurately. You also might not track the total ROI and the keywords that give you the highest conversions.
In contrast to that, results from PPC are more measurable and accurate. Using PPC, networks such as Google Adwords give you an accurate measure of your ads and landing pages’ performance. You’ll know the ads that are yielding higher conversions and ROI. You can also understand the words that are leading up to the most conversions.
Most PPC platforms such as Adwords and Facebook advertising also offer pixel tracking. Pixel tracking involves a tracking code that helps track down your results. This way, you can easily measure the ROI from each keyword, ad, and landing page.
It looks like this is where the user’s record is stored and is often used for retargeted ads.
Having accurate metrics such as conversion rate and ROI can be beneficial. Measurable results for PPC campaigns help you optimize for better conversions. This way, you can keep improving the keywords and ads that you use. This will yield you better sales over time.

3. You Can Control the Type of Visitors to Your Website

Unlike SEO, PPC campaigns can be highly targeted and specific. You can control the type of visitors who would visit your website’s landing page. This magnitude of control is not possible in the case of SEO.
In SEO, you cannot control visitors' types to your website and their search intent. Someone who is only looking for information may come to your website through SEO. You cannot make sure that there is high purchase intent in the case of SEO.
In the case of PPC, you can target visitors with high purchase intent. You can also control the landing page that the visitors should land on. Controlling the website page that the user will land on is also not possible in SEO.
PPC allows you to target a highly specific audience. You can personalize your ads to target potential audiences.
You can filter the target audience by demographics, geographical location, and intent. Hence, with PPC, you have higher control over the type of website visitors.

4. You Can Run A/B Tests For PPC Campaigns

Another great advantage of PPC is that you can get quick feedback from PPC campaigns. You can run A/B tests on PPC campaigns. Using the test results, you can determine the keyword, ad, landing page, or copy that yields you the highest conversions.
In SEO, it is not possible to pinpoint any success metrics to a specific strategy. This is because every strategy takes a lot of time to yield results. Hence, it is not feasible to A/B test SEO campaigns and gets quick feedback.
Suppose that you want to test the Google ads campaign that you are running for a landing page. You can run A/B tests by varying the ad copy, the keywords you bid, or the headline. This way, you’ll be able to optimize the PPC campaign to yield better conversions.
In the case of SEO, optimizing for new keywords and target keywords is not entirely in your control. Moreover, the results may take a long time to show up.

5. PPC Helps You Track Ads in Real-Time

You cannot use SEO to track metrics in real-time. But this is possible in the case of PPC campaigns. Using PPC, you can get an immediate idea about the performance of your ads.
Using PPC, you can track the number of clicks and the amount of traffic to your website in real-time. You can also track the number of conversions to sales in real-time. This acts as quick feedback for your PPC campaigns.
Tracking ad performance in real-time allows you to make quick decisions and improvements. For instance, if you observe that an ad is not performing well, you can make changes to the ads. You can then check if the changes are yielding you better metrics.

Disadvantages of Using PPC


PPC has some great benefits, such as quick results and the capability to run A/B tests. However, there are a few disadvantages to PPC as well.

1. PPC is Expensive

In the case of PPC campaigns, you pay for each click on the ad. This can be a massive investment for businesses, especially while starting. In the case of SEO, the investment is mostly in terms of time and effort. Compared with SEO, PPC is much more expensive.
PPC is even costlier for competitive niches. The amount that you pay for each click may go up to even $40 or $50. Not everyone clicking on the ad is going to convert. Some may simply click out of curiosity, and some may click on it accidentally. Sometimes, it may be flooded with ads, where a layman assumes it’s an organic result provided by Google and clicks on it.
Some of your competitors may also click on it. All these can compound huge monetary losses.
If you fail to optimize your landing page for UX signals, then Google will increase your PPC costs. So, if you are a small business with lower product costs, PPC campaigns may even put you into losses.

2. It Might Take Some Time to Optimize PPC Campaigns For Profitability

As mentioned before, not every click for your PPC ad will come from a target customer. Some may convert, and some may leave without conversions. Some visitors may even accidentally visit your landing page.
Because of this, the unpredictability of PPC campaigns is very high. For some time initially, you may even run into losses. This is because you wouldn’t have enough data to optimize the PPC campaigns for profitability.
Gathering enough data and experimenting with different keyword bids will take time. You’ll need time to get optimum results and gain stability in the CPC and conversion rate metrics.
After the initial period of struggle, you’ll be able to stabilize your CPC and conversion rates. Only after this time period, you’ll be able to optimize your PPC campaigns and ensure sure-shot profitability.

3. Long-Term PPC May Lead to Ad Blindness

If your PPC ads are doing well, you cannot be sure that they will do well for a long time. Over a long period, users get used to seeing your ads.
After viewing your ads and your message for a long time, users will get familiarized with your ads. The curiosity to click on the ad and discover your offering may die down. This is why the same PPC campaigns over a long time may be ineffective. This is because of ad blindness.
For instance, here’s a banner ad from Amazon that has kept running it a long time. It not only kills the audience's attention but also annoys them.
Ad blindness is a website usability phenomenon. Ad blindness is when users consciously or subconsciously ignore your ads as they get used to seeing them. This is why running the same PPC ads for long may not be effective.
To make your PPC ads work for long, you need to keep changing them. For example, you can make changes to the headline, messaging, images, copy, etc. If you keep refreshing your PPC ads, you’ll keep achieving good results .

4. PPC Cannot Guarantee Sales

Many new business owners might feel that simply investing in PPC ads is enough. And that investing in PPC will result in sales. But the truth is entirely different. Investing in PPC advertising does not guarantee you sales.
The truth is that no matter how much money you put into PPC campaigns, you cannot be sure of getting sales. Users may seem interested in your offer and click through to your landing page. But there is no guarantee that they will purchase your offering.
Just like in the case of SEO, PPC also needs experimentation and optimization. You have to optimize your offering, your landing page, and your ad in such a way that you generate sales. This is a complicated process and may take you long.
It may take you a lot of time and money to finally start generating sales at good profits. You may need to go through lots of iterations of testing to generate sales at a satisfactory rate finally.

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SEO Vs. PPC


By now, you know that both SEO and PPC have their set of pros and cons. SEO is a clear winner in the long term and hence is the best choice for your business.
Let’s have a clear comparison between SEO and PPC so that you can understand which one’s better for your business.

SEO PPC
Traffic SEO helps you generate free traffic to your website. Google sends visitors to your site free of cost. In the case of PPC, you pay for every visitor to your website. You pay for every click-through from the ad to your landing page.
Time SEO takes a long time to show results. It may take you months or even a year to see significant results through SEO. As compared to SEO, PPC takes minimum time to set up. Once your PPC ad starts running, you’ll instantly start getting results.
Control Even if you follow the SEO rule book completely, you won’t have control over the results. The control you have in the case of results through SEO is much less. With PPC campaigns, you have much more control. You can decide which page you want people to visit on your website. You can also decide the keywords that you want to rank for.
Testing Testing methods such as A/B testing are not possible in the case of SEO. This is because the test results will take a long time to take effect. A/B testing is much more efficient in the case of PPC. You can get instant feedback on testing and use it to optimize your ads.
Effectiveness in long-term SEO helps you long-term. If you keep updating your content, you’ll rank on Google for a long time. PPC ads may lose effectiveness in the long term because of ad blindness. Users may get used to your ads, and you may not get the same results for long.
Website visitors A downside of SEO is that it cannot guarantee website visitors. Even after on-page and off-page optimization, Google may not send you many visitors. PPC guarantees your website visitors. Google will show your ads on the top of Google SERPs. Hence, you’ll start getting traffic almost immediately. This also depends on your ad copy.
Measuring results The results from SEO are not easily measurable. It is difficult to measure lead generation, conversions, and ROI for SEO. With PPC, it is much easier to measure results. You can easily calculate metrics such as ROI conversions.
Real-time tracking You cannot track metrics in real-time using SEO. PPC allows you to track visitors and sales in real-time. This helps you gather instant feedback and improve your ads.
Efforts SEO requires you to put consistent efforts to fetch you good results. You have to keep publishing content and update the old content to see results. Compared to SEO, the efforts needed for PPC are quite low.
Predictability Google comes with SEO algorithm updates very frequently. Major updates lead to unpredictable changes in the results. There are no sudden changes and unpredictability with respect to PPC.
ROI The long-term ROI through SEO is higher. After the initial investment in time and efforts, you’ll see great results. The ROI of PPC is lower compared to that of SEO.
Authority SEO helps establish your brand as an authority in your niche. Users generally do not trust ads as much as organic results. Hence, by solely relying on PPC, it is difficult to establish authority in a niche.
User Experience SEO helps you improve the user experience of all the pages on your website. For PPC, you only have to work on improving the user experience of the landing page.
Competitive niches SEO is extremely challenging for highly competitive niches. Even after years of effort, you may not be able to rise to the top organic positions of Google. PPC is also difficult for competitive niches but not as much as SEO. For competitive niches, the CPC will be higher.

Benefits of PPC and SEO Working Together


Both SEO and PPC have their share of advantages and disadvantages. With SEO, the challenges are different. And with PPC, the challenges are entirely different. It is best to work with both hand-in-hand.
You’ll notice the best results for your business when you focus on implementing both SEO and PPC together. Let’s look at some of the top benefits of doing so:

1. Use PPC Ad Results For Improving SEO Results

The best part about PPC campaigns is that you get immediate feedback on your ads. You can run A/B tests or track metrics in real-time. This feedback can be very useful to improve your results from SEO.
For example, suppose that your A/B test on PPC ads reveals that certain keywords fetch you higher conversion rates. You can then optimize your content for these keywords using on-page and off-page SEO tactics. This way, your content will start ranking for these keywords and will fetch you better results.
Similarly, using PPC ads feedback, you’ll also learn about the copy and messaging that works best. Suppose you find that particular messaging works better than others. In that case, you can use this messaging for optimizing your organic content as well.

2. Dominate the SERPs

If you work on both SEO and PPC together, there is a high chance that you’ll dominate the SERPs. This is because your website will start ranking in the organic search results for the target keywords. And, your website will also show up in the ads section for the same keyword.
Dominating the SERPs this way has many advantages. One of the first benefits is that you gain very high visibility. People searching for similar keywords will get familiarized with your brand name and offering.
Also, most of the traffic from the target keywords will come to your website. This is because you’ll be ranking for both organic and paid search results. Your website will occupy the most space in the SERPs.
Dominating the SERPs will also help you gain authority in your niche and beat competitors. Once you start ranking for both organic and paid results, users will prefer you over your competitors. Your brand will emerge as a thought leader in the niche.

3. Get Increased Visibility

As previously discussed, when you implement both SEO and PPC together, there is a high chance that you’ll dominate the SERPs. This will be excellent for improving your brand’s visibility.
Users are likely to click on the PPC ads that come up, leading to direct sales. Or, other users might click on the organic results and go through your organic content. This way, you bring these users into your sales funnel.
Some users might not click through your ad or your organic results. But, over time, they’ll start getting familiarized with your brand name. And this way, there is a high chance that they’ll come into your funnel and convert.
Increased visibility also helps you fetch word of mouth referrals. When your brand’s popularity improves, you’ll also start getting searches for your brand names. Hence, SEO and PPC working together can be highly effective to gain increased awareness for your business.

4. Maximize Your ROI

As discussed in the previous sections, SEO yields the best ROI for any business. However, the main downside of only relying on SEO is that it takes longer to show results. Solely relying on SEO is good. But, you’ll have to wait for months or a year before you start rankings.
On the contrary, PPC fetches you instantaneous results. But PPC also has disadvantages. PPC ads may be expensive, and you may even run into losses for an initial few days. Also, the ROI from PPC is not as high as SEO.
When you use PPC and SEO together, you can overcome the disadvantages of both. And, you can amplify the advantages of both PPC and SEO. This will yield you the best ROI.
For example, suppose that you start working on SEO and PPC together. Initially, the ROI from SEO will be null. But, PPC ads will fetch you some sales. But the ROI from PPC also might not be the best.
Over time, the ROI from PPC will stabilize. And SEO will start showing results. This way, you’ll start dominating the Google SERPs for the right keywords. Over time, the combination of the two will get you the best ROI.

Conclusion

To conclude, we can say that both SEO and PPC have their advantages and disadvantages. The traffic from SEO is free, but it takes a lot of time to show results. In comparison, PPC can be effective in getting you instant results. But, PPC can be quite expensive to begin with.
The best way to maximize your ROI and get the most sales for your business is to combine both. When SEO and PPC work together, you’ll get increased visibility, more sales and will be able to survive for a long time.
We are experts in creating a winning strategy with SEO and PPC together. Drop your details here to get expert consultation from our digital marketing experts.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Joseph Schneider

He has spent more than 12 Years in strategising and executing SEO campaigns. He is interested to writing Digital-marketing, PPC and Social Media Marketing related topics.