What is PPC?
As the internet has become the go-to place when it comes to advertising, different models and methods of advertising have been developed. PPC, or pay-per-click, is a model of internet marketing whereby the person or business advertising will pay the advertisement publisher a fee every time the link that was published is clicked on. PPC is considered a way to drive traffic to your website without having to earn them organically. One of the most popular kinds of pay-per-click marketing is search engine PPC, whereby your advertisements are promoted on search engine pages and when a user clicks on these displays, you would pay the search engine itself. One of the most popular versions of this form of pay-per-click Advertising is Google Ads! Different businesses or individuals would bid for spots on search engines when a certain phrase or keyword is typed into the search bar. This ensures that you are advertising to the right kinds of people! As with any kind of marketing model, there are pros and cons of PPC.
What are the pros of Pay-Per-Click Advertising?
One of the pros of PPC has to do with the time that it takes to set this form of advertising up. While other forms of marketing like SEO may take months to get right, PPC is quick and you could be receiving more clicks and gaining more traffic immediately. When using pay-per-click through search engines, you can get your advertisement to the top of search results quickly, with minimal effort on your part. These marketing tactics also offer great returns if you end up selling your product. While a click may cost you around $2, if you end up selling a product for $200, you have made a great profit!
What are the cons of Pay-Per-Click Advertising?
The cons of PPC include the shrinking potential of your ROI as many are interacting less and less with paid advertisements. As more and more people are becoming aware of this form of advertising, particularly on search engines, many are choosing to rather skip over these advertisements and head straight to the organic search results. This means that you are receiving less traffic than you would want through these tactics. Another con of pay-per-click marketing is that even when a person does not make a purchase, you still have to pay for the click. If a person lands up on your website through these pay-per-click channels and does not end up making a purchase, which many will not, you will still have to pay for the click.
What is SEO?
SEO is another form of marketing that looks to increase the visibility of a website and stream more traffic to web pages. While PPC uses a form of paid advertising to do this, SEO focuses on optimising a website so that it is ranked higher on search engine results pages. In order to create ranking pages that are based on presenting the best content to users, search engines crawl through websites to analyse the information that the page holds. If you have high-quality content, good authority, backlinks and relevant keywords, you are far more likely to rank higher on search engines! Using SEO tactics to ensure that you are ranking highly on search engines can be a great way to market your business and increase the amount of traffic on your website. Again, as with any form of advertising, there are pros and cons of SEO to take into consideration.
What are the pros of SEO?
SEO helps to increase website traffic through organic means, meaning that you are not paying directly for the traffic that you get. By completing keyword research for SEO, backlink analysis and increasing the authority of your website, you are ultimately creating information that will be read by search engine crawlers and determined to be valuable information. When information is typed into Google, or another search engine, and matches the data that you have on your website, you will rank higher on search engine results pages and receive traffic! While this may take some time, once you have it set up and have applied SEO tactics to your data, you are sure to increase the visibility of your website.
What are the Differences Between PPC and SEO?
While pay-per-click advertising and SEO are both marketing tactics that can help a website to increase its visibility and the amount of traffic that is streamed to web pages, they use very different tactics to do this. While PPC is a form of paid advertising that strays away from gaining traffic through organic processes, SEO looks to gain rankings and attract traffic by improving the quality of its own website. When considering SEO vs PPC, you need to think about the overall goal of your website. If you are looking for immediate results, PPC offers quicker solutions. For long-term results that will cost you less money in the future, you are going to want to apply SEO tactics when formatting and creating website content.
Should PPC and SEO Be Used Together or Separately?
Pay-per-click Advertising and SEO can be used together and may offer a great solution to ensure that both your short-term and long-term goals are met. Using these two forms of marketing synonymously will help to ensure that you are gaining traffic quickly while preparing your content to retain and gain users organically in the future! Using these together can help your brand to better situate itself within the market and ensure that all potential avenues for gaining traffic are being used effectively!
