The best way to drive traffic to your website for most businesses is through search engines, so it is essential to secure a prominent position on a Search Engine Results Page (SERP). The two ways to do this are through search engine optimisation (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.
The two options offer a different approach to generating leads and sales. Depending on what you are looking to achieve, either PPC or SEO might be better at reaching your business goals.
With PPC, businesses bid on relevant keywords to appear as a sponsored link at the top of SERPs. When visitors search for those keywords, the ad will be displayed in the sponsored results section. A business only pays for the ad if the link is clicked. The most popular ads are Google Ads, but advertising on Facebook, LinkedIn (ADD LINK - Why you need LinkedIn paid ads for your business (cotswoldweb.co.uk)) (ADD LINK - Facebook Ads: Measure your conversions! (cotswoldweb.co.uk)) or other social media can be just as effective, depending on your own target audience.
SEO is a long-term strategy to generate clicks without having to pay for them directly. It is about optimising your website content around relevant target keywords to convince a search engine that your business is a leading authority on a particular subject.
Here we will discuss the pros and cons of each, and which delivers the better return on investment (ROI) for your marketing budget.
One way to help you make a decision on which is the best option for your business is to check out the competition. They are targeting the same audience as you, so you can learn from their successes and their failures. If your competitors are investing heavily in PPC, it could indicate it would work well for your business too. And on the flipside, if they are ranking well in search results, investing in SEO could be the way forward.
PPC pros
PPC cons
SEO pros
SEO cons
It would be great if there was a simple answer to the SEO vs PPC question, but it is not as straightforward as that. When trying to decide whether SEO or PPC gives you the best ROI for your marketing budget, you need to weigh up both your business goals and your available budget. If you have a limited budget, SEO could be the most cost-effective option. But if you need fast results or you have a bigger budget, investing in PPC will give your business more visibility and generate leads more quickly.
It is always important to strike a balance between the two different approaches and your own business goals. The reality is that most businesses will use a combination of SEO and PPC to give them the best results. Neither of them will do everything you need them to do independently, and they will complement each other as part of a holistic marketing strategy. Investing in SEO can help develop credibility for your brand, drive organic leads and generate long-term interest in your business, while targeted PPC can boost sales at important times, like new product launches or in the run-up to Christmas and other key trading periods.
By weighing up factors like cost-effectiveness, conversion rates and long-term results versus short-term results, you can make an informed decision around SEO and PPC, based on the unique requirements of your own business.
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