If you’re looking to generate more traffic to your website, two reliable online marketing strategies come to mind: search engine optimization (SEO) or pay-per-click (PPC). Both SEO and PPC optimization are reliable marketing strategies for businesses and web site owners; however, each strategy is a bit different than the other, especially in the way they generate results. But which approach is better?
Let’s first start with PPC optimization. PPC programs allow you to pay for web-traffic by utilizing the PPC services through popular search engines such as Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing and others. These advertising programs enable you to display ads in the sponsored results section of each search engine’s results page (SERP). You pay for these advertisements through flexible fees that are based on how competitive your chosen keyword is. For example, whenever a viewer lands on your website from from your PPC advertisement, the rank and fee for that keyword will increase — hence the label “pay-per-click.” PPC experts use the term “click through rate” to describe the amount of visitors to a website coming from PPC ads. Click through rates for PPC ads with Google are 600 times higher than click through rates for Facebook. They provide fast, short-term and reliable results. Also, if you’re worried about paid advertisements not getting results, it’s important to understand that over 45% of internet users cannot identify a paid search result from an organic one, even if it is not clearly separated on the side of the page.
Search engine optimization is a bit different than PPC optimization. For starters, SEO campaigns are an on-going process, and the results take longer to notice when compared to PPC services. SEO works to improve the online visibility of a website by creating high quality and valuable content for both on and off-site syndication. Doing so allows search engines to recognize your website as more valuable to viewers, thus improving the rank of your website on the SERP. Businesses and web site owners who are looking to make a long term investment should consider SEO services. SEO campaigns are also a good way to avoid the audience of web users who stay away from paid advertisements — recent research shows about 75% of all search engine users completely ignore paid advertisements.
So, back to the original question — which approach is better? It all depends on your needs and your marketing budget. If you want more traffic fast and are willing to pay for it, then PPC might be right for you. But if you’re open to making a long term investment, for future results, it may make more sense to invest in high search engine rankings through quality SEO services. Additionally, you don’t have to pick just one; in fact, a combination of SEO and PPC campaigns can be a very powerful marketing strategy for any business.
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