SEO or PPC, Which is Better for your Long-Term Digital Marketing Strategy – see the answer!

Search engine optimization (SEO) or pay-per-click advertising (PPC) both have their place but which is better for your business – well, this depends. PPC pops a number in the immediate but SEO provides long-term momentum that you’ll never find paying for every click unless your budget’s bottomless.

The primary difference between SEO and PPC is that SEO relies on organic traffic that you don’t need to pay for while a PPC strategy essentially pays Google to prioritize your web page at a higher search engine rank than it deserves. PPC is pretty self-explanatory, in this sense. You pay them, you give them the ad, and they post it relevant to your audience.

SEO’s a little more complex, relying on algorithms to rank your website. SEO relies on website quality, the quality of your content, whether you are mobile responsive, and product or service ratings and reviews. With SEO, everyone wants to get to the top spot on search results. In fact, more than 50% of people will click on either the first or second search result when searching a term.

Thankfully, if you pick the right SEO keywords, you can accomplish a lot with this. As you zero in on certain keywords and incorporate location-based keywords, you can find SEO strategies to successfully get you to top spots. It’s not all keywords though. A lot goes into ranking websites. Google wants the best, most accurate search results and they invest a lot into getting this, considering factors like backlinks, site speed, image optimization, and language markup to decide the quality of your website.

When discussing which is more preferable between SEO and PPC, it depends on the brand and their objective. Both can generate amazing results! PPC advertising can be great to create immediate awareness. That said, it can be very expensive. If you’re inexperienced or target the wrong keywords, your money can also be wasted trying to get customers through this method. Comparatively, SEO takes time to build but the momentum it generates is more sustainable. Subsequently, SEO’s not necessarily as expensive as PPC when one factors in the support it provides to email, social media, and other marketing channels.

SEO works when you’re seeking long-term credibility, authority, and a regular supply of sales. Advantages of SEO include being a low-cost digital marketing strategy, more permanent results, and more engagement. While PPC results are consistent as long as you keep spending, when you conclude your campaign, there’s nothing further to gain from your marketing. Comparatively, SEO’s ROI will continue to climb higher and higher for months on end and possibly years depending on how you structure your campaign and what you’re doing to maintain it. Here are some questions to ask yourself about which option’s the best one for you.

 What size is your digital marketing budget? If you can’t commit $10/day minimum for PPC, SEO’s more cost-effective.
 How expensive is a cost-per-click in your industry? If it’s too costly, SEO may be the way to go.
 How competitive are organic search engine rankings? If there’s a lot of competition locally, you’ll have to be smarter about how you spend your budget and where.

Both PPC and SEO are wonderful digital marketing strategies but we’re always going to favor SEO’s power as a long-term momentum generator. Speak with a representative at Unlimited Exposure for more information on how SEO can help your brand.