Hailed as two of the most pow­er­ful dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing meth­ods, search engine opti­mi­sa­tion (SEO) and pay-per-click adver­tis­ing (PPC) are game chang­ers for any busi­ness. Not only do they con­tribute to high-qual­i­ty traf­fic and con­ver­sions — but they also give a busi­ness a dis­tinct com­pet­i­tive edge.

The ques­tion is: which one should you focus on? Well, the answer isn’t clear-cut. In fact, when it comes to decid­ing on the right tac­tic, there are lots of fac­tors to con­sid­er. We’ll be break­ing things down and tak­ing you through the ins and outs of both, so you can make the best deci­sion for your busi­ness. Let’s dive in.

What is SEO?

Search engine opti­mi­sa­tion or SEO is the set of activ­i­ties involved with increas­ing your web­site’s vis­i­bil­i­ty and rank­ings on search engine results pages (SERPs). SEO is imple­ment­ed with the goal of gain­ing organ­ic traf­fic, which is often cit­ed as one of the most valu­able and con­sis­tent traf­fic sources for a business.

Google is the web’s most pop­u­lar search engine. So, it isn’t sur­pris­ing that real estate on the first page of the search results guar­an­tees scores of high-qual­i­ty traf­fic. To bag a lucra­tive spot, you’ll need to focus on web­site archi­tec­ture, con­tent cre­ation, as well as some 200 oth­er rank­ing fac­tors that Google takes into consideration.

In a nut­shell, SEO con­sists of the following:

• Key­word research: fig­ur­ing out what your audi­ence is search­ing for
• On-page SEO: cre­at­ing con­tent that your audi­ence is search­ing for
• Off-page SEO: estab­lish­ing trust and author­i­ty through oth­er websites
• Tech­ni­cal SEO: ensur­ing search engines can find, crawl, and index your content

What Is PPC?

Like SEO, pay-per-click (or PPC) is a form of search engine mar­ket­ing. PPC involves host­ing your ads with a pub­lish­er like Google or Face­book and pay­ing each time users click on your ads.

Reach­ing over 90% of all inter­net users, Google’s Dis­play Net­work is the most pop­u­lar adver­tis­ing net­work on the web. As PPC ads appear above organ­ic search results, they can boost vis­i­bil­i­ty, leads, and conversions.

Essen­tial­ly, PPC involves:

• Key­word research: estab­lish­ing what your cus­tomers are search­ing for
• Bid set­ting: deter­min­ing how much you want to pay per ad click
• Ad cre­ation: design­ing rel­e­vant, com­pelling ads
• Audi­ence tar­get­ing: select­ing who should see your ads
• Audi­ence retar­get­ing: select­ing who should see your ads again

SEO vs. PPC

Although SEO and PPC are both key­word-dri­ven strate­gies, they dif­fer in sev­er­al impor­tant ways. Notably, PPC involves pay­ing for traf­fic via tar­get­ed ads, while SEO involves earn­ing traf­fic rank­ings on SERPs. Oth­er dif­fer­ences include the following:

Visibility

Both tac­tics offer great vis­i­bil­i­ty, with PPC ads sit­ting above organ­ic list­ings. Although many improve­ments have been made to paid search in recent years, most inter­net users still pre­fer organ­ic search results.

Cost and ROI

Even though cre­at­ing rel­e­vant ads and get­ting a strong qual­i­ty score tends to low­er your costs over time, PPC can still be expen­sive. With on-page, off-page, and tech­ni­cal SEO, costs can add up pret­ty quick­ly too.

How­ev­er, even tak­ing the cost of SEO into account, it is still more cost-effec­tive than PPC in the long run. And unlike paid traf­fic, organ­ic traf­fic is scal­able and comes at no addi­tion­al cost.

Strategic focus

SEO is bet­ter suit­ed to long-term goals and low-com­pe­ti­tion key­words, while PPC is bet­ter suit­ed to short-term goals and high-com­pe­ti­tion key­words. The same PPC cam­paigns aren’t sus­tain­able over the long term (due to fac­tors like ad stal­e­ness or ad blind­ness), but top organ­ic list­ings are effec­tive even after years.

Strengths and weaknesses

Last­ly, each tac­tic has its own set of ben­e­fits and lim­i­ta­tions. We’ll run through them below:

Pros of SEO:

• High-qual­i­ty traffic
• More organ­ic conversions
• 24/7 vis­i­bil­i­ty
• Not affect­ed by bud­get constraints
• Cheap­er in the long run
• Increas­es brand authority
• Sup­ports dif­fer­ent stages of the cus­tomer journey
• More cus­tomer-friend­ly web experience
• Increas­es back­link­ing potential

The cons of SEO:

• Time-con­sum­ing
• Com­pli­cat­ed to manage
• Slow returns
• New domains are at a disadvantage
• Con­tent must be updat­ed regularly
• Algo­rithms and rank­ing fac­tors change constantly

The pros of PPC:

• Vis­i­bil­i­ty above organ­ic rankings
• Quick­er results
• High­er con­ver­sion rates
• Bet­ter tar­get­ing and customisation
• Test­ing and track­ing are easier
• High­lights key busi­ness infor­ma­tion in a way that SEO doesn’t
• Pro­vides detailed data to improve oth­er mar­ket­ing strategies

The cons of PPC:

• Affect­ed by bud­get constraints
• High cost-per-click in very com­pet­i­tive industries
• High­er cus­tomer acqui­si­tion costs
• Low­er return on investment
• High-qual­i­ty scores are time-con­sum­ing and expensive
• Less vis­i­bil­i­ty if com­peti­tors bid more
• Con­stant updates are need­ed to com­bat ad blindness
• Con­stant test­ing is required to con­tin­ue deliv­er­ing results

How Do I Choose Between PPC and SEO?

While SEO and PPC are both great strate­gies for increas­ing brand vis­i­bil­i­ty and gen­er­at­ing leads, choos­ing between them is large­ly about find­ing the best fit for your needs, goals, and bud­get. Let’s con­sid­er the following:

Needs

To choose between SEO and PPC, let your most press­ing needs guide you. Do you urgent­ly need leads and sales? Then paid search is the way to go. Are you look­ing to posi­tion your busi­ness as an expert in your field? Then con­sid­er SEO.

Goals

Remem­ber to look at your short and long-term goals too. If you’re just start­ing out and have the bud­get for it, PPC is a great way to gain vis­i­bil­i­ty and leads. Short-term goals with a sense of urgency, such as pro­mot­ing active mar­ket­ing cam­paigns or events, ben­e­fit more from PPC ads. Long-term goals, such as reach­ing the top of SERPs or out­rank­ing your com­peti­tors, are bet­ter suit­ed to a com­pre­hen­sive SEO strategy.

Budget

What is your bud­get? While SEO is suit­ed to a mod­est bud­get, PPC isn’t. Quick wins are a guar­an­tee with PPC, but over time ads can get stale, and acqui­si­tion costs may become a major lim­it­ing factor.

If you’re pre­pared to invest in a great SEO strat­e­gy, your efforts will even­tu­al­ly pay off. Alter­na­tive­ly, if you can afford to focus on both SEO and PPC, that may be even more ben­e­fi­cial for your business.

Con­sid­er SEO if you:

• Have a lim­it­ed mar­ket­ing budget
• Want a greater ROI over the long-term
• Want to estab­lish brand authority
• Want to cre­ate qual­i­ty con­tent to cater to your audience

Con­sid­er PPC if you:

• Need leads and sales quickly
• Want to pro­mote time-sen­si­tive offers
• Want to cre­ate inter­est and aware­ness for your products

Which Is Best for Your Brand?

To decide whether SEO or PPC is bet­ter for your brand, con­sid­er the nature of your busi­ness and your audi­ence. From a strate­gic stand­point, you should also be able to answer the fol­low­ing questions:

• Are you will­ing to play the long game?
• What’s your com­pe­ti­tion like in organ­ic search?
• What is the cost per click in paid search for your industry?
• Do you have domain authority?

Consider the nature of your business

What indus­try are you in? Do you offer prod­ucts or ser­vices? The busi­ness ser­vices indus­try gets 73% of its traf­fic through organ­ic search, so if you’re a ser­vice busi­ness, you may want to con­sid­er a sol­id SEO strat­e­gy. If you’re a small local busi­ness need­ing a few leads a week, you could see great results from local organ­ic search vis­i­bil­i­ty even in the short term, espe­cial­ly if you face lit­tle competition.

How­ev­er, if you run a new online store, for exam­ple, you’ll strug­gle to out­rank fierce com­peti­tors like eBay or Ama­zon over the short term and would prob­a­bly gain more from a good paid search strategy.

Consider your audience

Are your ide­al cus­tomers search­ing for infor­ma­tion or ready to buy? How do they nav­i­gate the web? Would a paid or organ­ic search strat­e­gy serve them bet­ter? Answer­ing all these ques­tions about your audi­ence will help you deter­mine the best approach for your business.

SEO and PPC: An Integrated Approach

There’s no doubt that focus­ing on even one of these tac­tics can do won­ders for your busi­ness. How­ev­er, if you want top-notch results, you might con­sid­er an inte­grat­ed approach. As each tac­tic has its own mer­its and lim­i­ta­tions, com­bin­ing them tends to balance

things out. Addi­tion­al­ly, SEO and PPC tend to sup­port not only each oth­er but all your oth­er dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing efforts too.

6 rea­sons to use both SEO and PPC:

1. You can tar­get your audi­ence at every stage of the cus­tomer journey.

2. You can increase traf­fic and conversions.

3. The insights you gath­er from PPC (key­words, con­ver­sions, etc.) can be used to bol­ster your SEO efforts.

4. The copy and con­tent that res­onates with your audi­ence can be used to guide your con­tent strategy.

5. Test­ing the effec­tive­ness of your land­ing pages and ad copy can guide your deci­sion-mak­ing for both SEO and PPC.

6. You can refine your key­word strat­e­gy using PPC before invest­ing in long-term SEO strategies.

Should I Learn PPC or SEO?

Start with what would work best for your busi­ness right now and ven­ture out from there. When it comes to learn­ing SEO and PPC, knowl­edge in one area tends to feed into the oth­er, so, an inte­grat­ed learn­ing approach could be advantageous.

While both tac­tics have steep learn­ing curves, a gen­er­al under­stand­ing of either can have a con­sid­er­able effect on how you run your busi­ness. As a busi­ness own­er, aim to have a gen­er­al under­stand­ing of how both tac­tics can help your com­pa­ny. If you have more time to ded­i­cate to learn­ing, explore how both strate­gies tie into your dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy and over­all busi­ness goals.

Learning SEO

To suc­ceed at SEO, you’ll need to learn how to lever­age key­word research, link strate­gies, tech­ni­cal SEO, and con­tent. You’ll have to mon­i­tor and update your site and con­tent to main­tain or increase your rank­ings. An under­stand­ing of Google’s rank­ing fac­tors and a com­mit­ment to adher­ing to their guide­lines will also be crucial.

Addi­tion­al­ly, you’ll need to stay up to date with ever-chang­ing SEO best prac­tices. So, there’s a lot to learn and keep learn­ing. The great news is that SEO guar­an­tees a deep­er under­stand­ing of your audi­ence, which can ben­e­fit oth­er mar­ket­ing areas as well.

Learning PPC

Design­ing effec­tive PPC cam­paigns will require you to excel at nav­i­gat­ing ad plat­forms, key­word research, bid­ding, ad cre­ation and land­ing page design. PPC can be chal­leng­ing to set up, not to men­tion ad plat­forms like Google Ads can be com­pli­cat­ed to fig­ure out.

How­ev­er, once you nail it down and start to pro­vide great ads, your qual­i­ty scores and con­ver­sion rates will improve. Again, the great news is that PPC pro­vides deep insight into your audi­ence and their behav­iour, which can pow­er SEO and oth­er mar­ket­ing areas as well.

Get the right tools

In addi­tion to knowl­edge, you’ll need the right tools to mas­ter both strate­gies. Google Trends and Key­word Plan­ner are essen­tial free tools for both SEO and PPC. They’re great for pro­vid­ing insight into com­peti­tors and the fac­tors asso­ci­at­ed with being able to rank for the search terms you’re going after.

Paid tools such as Ahrefs, SEM­Rush and Moz can be used for more in-depth key­word research, com­peti­tor analy­sis and con­tent plan­ning for both SEO and PPC.

Aim for knowledge but hire skills

SEO is incred­i­bly time-con­sum­ing — even with all the right tools and guid­ance, you still need to cre­ate con­tent, opti­mise your on-page ele­ments, and build links. PPC isn’t any dif­fer­ent; while it might seem easy to cre­ate ads and dis­play them to a cer­tain audi­ence, build­ing effec­tive PPC cam­paigns takes a lot of skill and knowledge.

Ad plat­forms are tricky to nav­i­gate, and there’s the added chal­lenge of under­stand­ing how to opti­mise your bids, key­words, and land­ing pages.

Rarely are any of these things pos­si­ble with­out a great in-house team or the help of a dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing agency. Instead of doing all the heavy lift­ing your­self, con­sid­er get­ting pro­fes­sion­al help; you’ll see far greater returns that way.

Final Thoughts

Ulti­mate­ly, whether you focus on SEO or PPC will depend on sev­er­al fac­tors. Along with your busi­ness’s unique goals and needs, care­ful­ly weigh the ben­e­fits and draw­backs of each approach. You’ll be able to make a more informed deci­sion that way. If you’re able to use both SEO and PPC, go for it, you stand to ampli­fy your results and achieve greater growth for your business.