This is some text prior to the author information. You can change this text from the admin section of WP-Gravatar To change this standard text, you have to enter some information about your self in the Dashboard -> Users -> Your Profile box. At SEO Masters we fully encourage our clients to try as many different marketing methods as possible. Different industries, products or services may find a selection of marketing channels may work better than another selection. So it’s worth trying lots of different options to see what works best .
A common misconception is that PPC and SEO can be compared, they are similar but not really comparable. The following points hopefully explain and provide an insight to why this is the case.
PPC
- Its quick to start and quick to stop – PPC can be turned on very quickly, a short amount of research can get a campaign going, further research will be required to work out which keywords, demographics and other segments will convert but a campaign can be setup and running within an hour.
- Focuses on single pages not a whole site – PPC requires landing pages to get a campaign going, each landing page should be extremely relevant to a keyword but PPC does not require the whole website to be focused around search terms.
- Easy to burn money – PPC is geared to encourage people to spend their budget, it is how Google became so successful and generated its own massive revenues. PPC has tools to control spending but qualified individuals who are not rushed are the best managers of effective use of budget.
- Relevancy is important but easily ignored – Relevancy is an important factor with PPC, having a relevant campaign and landing pages are important. Although it can be very easy to spend money to test and trial new options and ideas.
- Associated terms are extra – Each and every keyword that a PPC advert appears for is free but each click on an advert equates to a cost.
- PPC is billed directly to Google – Thanks to the adwords tools available, Google manages and owns all its onsite advertising available. This does mean that Google has no middle men, no other people to take a cut of the pie. It takes the full cost for every click, people’s time to manage the campaign is charged separately.
SEO
- No cost per click – Organic results that are influenced by SEO do not require a fee every time someone visits a website. This allows for much larger traffic volumes to be generated at a much lower cost and doesn’t stifle a sites visitors by a owners ongoing PPC budget.
- Associated terms for free – If a website has been optimised effectively onsite and the offsite promotion has been very strong, many associated terms will also generate traffic, even if SEO has not been completed to gain visibility on these terms.
- Focus on your online presence and not just keywords – To successfully complete SEO, a wide net of online promotion occurs on many different websites and online properties. This promotion generates traffic in its own right not from the search engines but from its online coverage. Without this coverage SEO does not work. SEO also requires a site to be structured effectively that helps improve a website to aid its customers.
- Site wide best practice recommendations as standard – Site wide changes are encouraged and implemented to make the best use of SEO traffic. If a whole website is configured around search terms it will generate more visits, so the best practice approach is to optimise a whole website.
- Assured relevant traffic – Because the effects of SEO are longer term and require a longer term investment of time and resources, the choices of keywords which are chosen to promote are often more relevant. The knock on effect of only focusing on relevant terms is that a whole website will generate traffic from associated relevant terms.
- Long term trusted results – SEO is a long term investment, it is not quick like PPC but as mentioned PPC is quick to start and to stop. Where SEO occurs for terms that a business would wish to be focused on for the long term. Google users can see that the results listed as organic listings are often more accurate and relevant than PPC adverts. So these results are trusted more, many search engine users are also aware that the sponsored listings are paid for.
- SEO works with Google but not for Google – Google does not receive any money when SEO work is completed, unlike PPC. However SEO requires websites to adhere to guidelines created by Google, but that’s it, so it’s good to know that you’re SEO marketing budget is spent on online promotion of your business across a number of websites and it is not simply being spent to just appear on Google owned advertising space.
So there are some large differences, we feel SEO is an important investment for most online businesses but we also agree that PPC can be very useful. As a long term investment, cost effective investment, SEO is generally the best option.
