Which is Better, SEO or PPC ?

Before selecting one, you need to understand the difference between SEO and PPC. Every business owner must decide which is best for their business.

SEO is also known as Search Engine Optimization, while PPC stands for Pay Per Click, and both are an important part of Search Engine Marketing.

As a PPC consultant, I have experience with both. Let’s have a detailed look at the differences:

COST: You might have to pay for both, however SEO might be the cheaper option SEO:

• People assume SEO is free, but in reality, you usually end up paying someone to do the work for you.
• SEO involves lot of work. It is not simple to generate traffic, as everyone with similar services or products like yours are competing with you for the same keywords and traffic.
• You should have very high quality content on your website. The website should be easy to navigate and load quickly.
• SEO also involves submitting your website to search engines and directories. You want to generate backlinks from good websites, and good websites usually charge.

PPC:

• Usually, you start paying from the word go. Most of the time you pay per click received to your website.
• Hiring a PPC consultant or Google AdWords Management service, although not mandatory, will help accelerate your results.

TIME: PPC is the fastest way to start getting traffic, SEO might take for a long time

SEO:

• Usually 4-6 months to start seeing results. This is usually the case no matter what agencies try to sell you, there is no quicker way to do it (legally).
• There is also “Black hat SEO,” which is an unethical way of doing SEO. This might get you results faster, but most of the time it will get your website banned completely from Search Engines.

PPC:

•  Ads will start generating traffic as soon as you start, and they’re effective until you run out of budget.

TRAFFIC: Both will get you good traffic if you optimize as per your goal and relevancy

SEO:

• Once you start ranking on desired terms, there is a good chance you will get most of the free traffic for those term; at least until some other website outranks you for that terms.
• The more competitive the terms the harder it will be to generate traffic for that keyword. This means more SEO work involved.
• Almost impossible to get traffic from competitor terms.

PPC:

• As long as you have the budget, you will be able to get traffic to your website.
• More popular terms will cost more money (cost per click). So, you might have to pay more to outrank others.
• It is very easy to get traffic on competitor terms (it might be expensive though).
• A Google Adwords Management service will be essential to helping you get the right traffic at the reasonable cost.

EFFECTIVENESS: PPC will have an edge here most of the time

SEO:

• Google changes the algorithm regularly to improve user experience, and sometimes all the work done on SEO might be erased.
• SEO will be less effective, especially for big websites. Small changes might impact ranking of your website and keywords matching to the particular page.
• You will also received traffic from unwanted terms.
• SEO links will always display under PPC results.

PPC:

• In PPC you can control exactly which terms your ads should appear for, and easily get rid of terms you don’t want.
• You can  push aggressively for best performing terms or variants, and pause or pullback underperforming terms.
• The most relevant ads are always displayed above the SEO results.
• You can also control exactly where you want to take a user on your website for specific terms.

A PPC Consultant’s Honest Take on SEO vs. PPC

Both are very important aspects of Search Engine marketing. However, if for any reason you have to select only one, you should always start with PPC and then move on to SEO. PPC will start giving you desired results instantly (if managed properly) by the time your SEO strategy or plan is even in effect.