The Battle Between SEO & PPC
Sep 21st, 2012 by Siew Ying
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay-per-click (PPC) have been used by many firms in improving website visibility. However, the debate whether to use SEO or PPC for online advertising method still exists.
SEO is what most companies now work on – to improve a website’s visibility in order to attract more visitors to their site. In order for a site to appear on customers’ organic searches, firms have done SEO campaigns for a website to be on top of the search result list. PPC helps improve a site’s visibility too but there’s cost attached to it. For every relevant keyword that the visitor type, the website will be visible to customers who are searching about the product. This makes information that customers requests be visible to them, but every click does impose a cost on company. These two methods use similar tactics in enhancing the searches – which is targeting “keywords” on webpage.
“Would you consider implementing SEO that is technically free or PPC that costs the firm on every visitors’ clicks?”
There are many factors to consider:
Long term or Short term?
Are you looking for long term or short term goals? Of course, both SEO and PPC generates similar results. With SEO, you succeeded in getting customers’ attention when your firm appears on the organic search list. With PPC, you will generate customers’ clicks with the ads banner. However, PPC is more suited towards a short campaign that points toward a targeted market. I personally think that customers will for stronger bonds with firms from SEO than PPC. Talking about my own experience on SEO and PPC, I normally click on organic searches links. This is because the paid links doesn’t sound convincing enough to me, as they are paid to be on the top of the list! However, I believe that PPC is suitable for short viral campaign that grabs customers’ attention. Clearly Contacts’ Competition that went on Facebook would be a great example for PPC. For the competition, customers post a picture about them wearing their new glasses from the firm, and a winner will be picked and rewarded each week. If Clearly Contacts uses PPC for this campaign, I would be the first to respond to it as it is a catchy competition that attracts my attention!
Time Frame?
Although SEO is technically free, it takes a longer period of time to be on top of the organic search list and to be noticeable to your customers. Also, firms normally outsource their SEO to experts in the field in order to get a more effective results. PPC will generates better results in a shorter time frame but it might cost more to the firm. Thus, the debates between saving costs or time is a concern to firm.
Type of Businesses?
Are you a bakery that targets local customers or a chain bakery that could serve the whole Vancity? These need to be taken into consideration as smaller firms normally find it harder to work with their SEO. This is true especially if you are a new start up firm and does not have much online connections. SEO will be harder to achieve, whereas a PPC campaign would suits you more. For local businesses, PPC campaign will helps new firms to have greater access to targeted markets as well as improving their online presence. Consumers will learn about the new firm through the campaign thus enhancing firm’s brand image. SEO can be implemented successfully by smaller firms if they chose the right keywords to targeted audience. For example, a local business might want to include the name of the business area as their keywords in order to target customers who are searching about locations of the products online.
There are many more factors that need to be considered and research has also shown that hybrid implementation generates positive results too. 3 factors that are mentioned above should be in your mind when you are deciding between SEO or PPC!