Looking for ways to boost the traffic going into your company’s website?
Many companies often struggle with getting their websites off the ground. Most of the time, it’s because they don’t have a good sense of how to market their sites.
One reason why companies tend to fail in marketing their sites is they don’t know where to start. Many get stuck choosing between SEO vs PPC. This is because these 2 are the most common and most surefire ways to improve your website’s traffic.
However, even if we cut it down to 2 choices, there are still a lot of decisions to make. To help you make those decisions, read on to learn the differences between PPC vs SEO:
What is PPC?
PPC stands for Pay Per Click. This is a marketing method where you pay for advertisements to get visitors into your website. In essence, this method is a means of getting paid traffic to boost your site’s popularity.
Most people tend to become turned off by the thought of inorganic visitors. PPC is different though that it also helps increase your organic presence on the internet. This is because the number of visitors still count towards the visitors you need to increase organic search rates.
There are many tools that can help you with your PPC marketing strategy. One such example is Google AdWords. Now known as Google Ads, this software is the most popular PPC system available today.
Here, users can bid on keywords and use advertisements to give Google’s searchers an easier time finding what they’re looking for. Right now, you must be thinking “Why are they bidding for keywords” and other questions like that. Continue on and learn how PPC works.
How PPC Works
The way PPC works is that you must first bid for a keyword on a PPC service like Google Ads. You do this because many marketers may also be after the same keywords. Competing with them often makes boosting traffic harder for both of you.
Winning a bid relies on a number of factors. The biggest influence though is your Ad Rank on Google Ads. While you can still win without that, it’s essential for bigger companies because of the competition they face.
That alone should say how important registering an account on Google Ads is. Once you win a bid on a keyword, you get to use that keyword to build an advertisement.
Why not build an ad without bidding for a keyword, you ask?
If you do that, there’s a big chance people never get to see that ad. This is because Google decides what ads appear when people use their browser.
After you’ve made an ad, all you need to do now is wait. Each time someone clicks on your PPC advertisement, an automated service pays Google and voila! You’ve gotten your first visit through PPC ads.
Pros of PPC
The pay per click method sounds good on paper, but people still tend to avoid it. This is because they don’t know how it can help their websites. They don’t realize that PPC is, in fact, a cost-effective method of advertising.
This is because you only need to pay an amount every time someone clicks on your ads. Ad views do not count towards the amount you need to pay. So, as you can see, there is no chance you will encounter an unknown charge when using a PPC strategy.
The rates themselves are quite cheap. Most PPC ads only charge 1 USD or 2 each time they get clicked. The rate also depends on the value of the keyword.
For example, keywords that a lot of people contest may cost up to 50 USD. Speaking of contests, this is another thing that makes PPC beneficial. Because there is bidding held for each keyword, the winner gets exclusive use.
You can also track how well your ads are doing. PPC services often keep tabs on the ads they make. They also give access to the ad’s owner to see the statistics of their ads.
Doing this helps you plan better strategies should your current ad campaign fail. If it’s a success, then you know what you need to keep doing to ensure more success. These statistics also tell you what you can improve on for your PPC ad campaign.
Cons of PPC
This marketing method is not without flaws. For instance, you will notice that it takes a while to get used to the community and their systems. This makes it hard for beginners to get a foothold the first time they attempt to use PPC methods.
Another reason why people are unsure of PPC is that it gives no guarantees. Sure, applying for a PPC campaign helps your ads get out there. It doesn’t mean that people will click on your ads though.
This method relies on the user’s skill to make marketable ads. This means that you will still do some work to get people to take notice of your ads. While it’s true you can bypass this obstacle by using video marketing tactics, this means that you need to spend time making a video worthy of your customer’s attention.
The time it will take for you to make one and market it may defeat the purpose of using PPC for convenience.
What is SEO?
a search engine optimization strategy is what allows our websites to appear on search engines. This method focuses more on using organic means to improve online visibility over time.
Why is SEO important, you ask?
Having good SEO allows a website to rank higher on the results page of search engines. When you Google something, the first link that appears tends to be the one that you click on, right? Now, imagine how much traffic it would bring your website if you have good enough SEO to be the first one to appear.
This means that most of your target demographic will get introduced to your website. This leads to many opportunities with an engaged community and frequent visitors that may turn into loyal customers if you’ve done a good job with your search engine optimization.
Understanding how SEO works is the best way to get a good SEO score. Read on to learn how to boost your website’s organic SEO.
How SEO Works
Building your SEO score from the ground up is easy for the most part. The way you do this is by improving the key factors to drive SEO improvement. Link building, customer engagement, on-site content, and even the meta tags and descriptions are factors that increase SEO.
Improve at least one of them and save the changes you made on your website. Search engines will soon crawl and check your website. They will determine the quality of your links and the content changes you made.
After they check the quality of your website, they rank it against other content on similar topics. They compare your site with other websites that share the same keywords as you. Engines then compare the scores between relevant websites when someone does a search.
Pros of SEO
SEO may sound challenging and hard to understand. You should know that SEO is not all that hard to learn. In fact, that’s one of the best perks of using SEO.
Even a total beginner can get the hang of one of the SEO increasing methods. Speaking of, that’s another good thing about SEO, there are many ways to do it. This allows you to have a chance at another method if the other ones are too complicated for you.
Using SEO to market your website also gives you a whole new demographic, mobile users. This is because search engines prioritize websites that cater to mobile users. So, setting up some mobile SEO will snag you more potential visitors.
Cons of SEO
Much like PPC, SEO also has its fair share of cons. For instance, it takes a long time before you can reap the rewards of SEO. This is because building up the organic growth of your website is a slow-paced process.
So, if you’re constrained with time, this may not be ideal for you. Another thing you should watch out for with SEO is customer reviews. Although they’re a benefit most of the time, it only takes one bad comment/review to tank your reputation.
SEO takes heavy influence from the customer engagement of a website. This is how one customer can impact your business a lot, for better or for worse.
The biggest downside of SEO though is its ever-changing environment. Search engines often release a lot of updates to address issues by their users. This tends to affect how SEO works for the most part.
For instance, search engines change to accommodate their younger audiences. This means that online marketing will change alongside it. This may lead to SEO tactics becoming obsolete for this new generation.
Choose Between SEO vs PPC Today
SEO vs PPC? Each of them can benefit your website in a big way. We can guide you to find which one will benefit your website under current conditions!