SEO VS PPC How To Choose What’s Right For Your Business
If you’re wondering about SEO vs. PPC and how to choose what’s right for your business, you’re in the right place. Here you’ll learn all the facts you need to know to make the right decision.
Whether a brick and mortar store or a completely online entity, your business will need a website to survive in today’s world. Designing a website with content is a relatively straightforward process. The essential process that must take place is how to get people to visit your company’s website and choosing the right web design agency for doing so. There are two clear ways to drive traffic to your site. SEO and PPC are the most popular tools you can use. In this article, we will discuss SEO and PPC and how to choose what’s right for your business.
What are SEO and PPC?
SEO
Search engine optimization or SEO has been around for many years in one form or another and is a tried and true method for helping gain website traffic. The main purpose of SEO is to rank a website within search engines such as the Google platform. When someone searches a topic, the search engine platform looks for websites that are optimized through SEO and rank these higher in the search list. Websites that have not optimized their pages will rank lower or not at all on the search engine.
You can take a look at these articles below to learn more about SEO:
- how to increase your online presence
- how to choose the best SEO company
- what do SEO companies do
- how SEO is done
PPC
Pay per click or PPC is another way to drive traffic to your website but in an entirely different way than SEO. PPC is an advertisement program where you as the website owner, promote your website on a search engine platform. The idea is that you pay the search engine team a fee for every click of the mouse your link generates in return for a prominent position at the top of the search engine page.
Differences
Although both PPC and SEO will drive traffic to your site, that is where the commonality ends. PPC is simply advertising in the classical sense, where you spend money to have people click and view your website.
The good news about PPC advertising is that the search engine company has already created the search algorithm for you in most cases. In other words, by the time a link to your site is shown in the list, someone has already searched with interest on the topic.
Proper SEO ranking happens when keywords and key phrases that are typically searched for, are incorporated into your website pages. As an example, if you own a company that sells dog treats, you may find that a common term searched for online is; Where to buy tasty dog treats? By embedding this phrase or keywords from it, into your site’s pages, you can gain a higher listing on a search page. This is essentially how SEO works.
What are the Advantages and Disadvantages of SEO and PPC?
To find which campaign style is best for your site, let’s take a look at the pros and cons of each.
The Pros of SEO
- SEO delivers specific traffic to your website without a pay per click cost to your business.
- Helps people who are interested in your site’s products easily find you through a web search.
- SEO also helps convert sales on your site since the keywords and phrases used to bring them there help filter out those who are interested in purchasing or using your content.
- Another benefit of SEO is that when done correctly, your site will be seen as an authority on the content that has been searched for. Once you have become the authority site that people trust, return visits are almost guaranteed.
The Cons of SEO
- For SEO to show benefits, as the owner of a website, you must show patience. One of SEO’s downsides is that it takes quite some time to optimize each page and time for search engines to rank you. If the optimization is not completed correctly, you may have to start over after a few months of waiting to correct any initial optimization issues.
- SEO is certainly not hard, and most can learn how to create content using it. There is a downside to using a trial and error method. For those who do not want to wait to see their site is properly optimized, they may hire a professional. Hiring a professional can be a benefit of SEO, but the con is that it can cost you money upfront. Peace of mind makes the decision to higher a professional the right one.
- SEO rules change over time. Due to updates and changes to SEO rules by search engine companies, your optimization could find itself obsolete and needing an update. However, this usually affects websites that lay stagnate, as websites need to be updated frequently to maintain relevance as rules change.
The Pros of PPC
- Once you have started a PPC campaign, your rankings on the search page are not dependent on your site’s keywords or phrases. You will have access to high ranking simply for taking part in the paid program.
- PPC is measurable in that you can see your upfront costs of advertisement against any revenue you receive after starting the campaign.
- You are able to control who sees your ad links. PPC allows for target marketing that you can control, change, and test.
- Traffic to your site is almost instant with PPC. Instead of waiting months for organic traffic through SEO, PPC will drive traffic to our site.
The Cons of PPC
- PPC can become expensive if those clicks are not converted into sales on your end. Remember, you are paying each time someone clicks on your site. If the user converts that click with a purchase, etc., then you will make a profit. If that same user is not converted into a purchase, you will still have the initial click cost.
- A saturated market may cost you more. PPC works well within a niche market but can be demanding in a more popular one. PPC rankings are based on bidding the best price to have your site listed higher. With large competition, you may find your bidding price is cutting into your profit margin.
Choosing Which One to Use
When looking between choosing SEO or PPC, the best solution is to use both. While each has its advantages and disadvantages, a mix of both methods gives your site the best chance to survive and thrive.
Choosing the right SEO company or SEM agency for your business is a process in itself. While business SEO services are vast, few companies really have what it takes. So thorough research and is needed in order to choose the right company.
NJ Bizmap LLC offers both SEO and PPC services. They are top ranked and provide comprehensive range of services. In addition, Bizmap LLC has transparent pricing with access to analytics. Bizmap has a great reputation as being a top notch NJ SEO agency, so give them a call or request a free audit!
Using PPC alone certainly does not help your site in the long term, as SEO will continue to drive traffic to your site in the future without paying a fee as with PPC. Similarly, sites that strictly use SEO will occasionally need a boost of visitors that PPC offers. When building and promoting your New Jersey website, be sure to use both of these methods to increase your site’s popularity.
We hope we’ve answered the questions about SEO vs. PPC and how to choose what’s right for your business and wish you the best!
