Happy Monday to you.
The question I get asked more frequently than any other is “I have a new website, I want to rank well in Google and I have a limited budget. Should I invest in SEO or Pay Per Click advertising?”
This post lays out the differences between the two, factors which help determine which is most suitable for you, and how they can be effectively combined.
The main diferences between PPC and SEO are:
PPC SEO
Ad appears in Sponsored Links Description appears in Natural List
You pay-per-click or site visit Clicks are free, you pay for the SEO activity.
Visibility is instant SEO is medium to long term (3-9 months)
Visibility is guaranteed There are no visibility guarantees
Keywords are unlimited Keywords are limited
Clicks are limited by budget No limitations once you have rank
Market Size as a determining factor
If your target market is small e.g 1,500 searches per month and only would cost €30 to send 2% of this traffic to your site at €1 per click. Then PPC is a pretty effective way for you to tap into this small market and a low monthly outlay.
If your target market is large, lets say you are already spending €8k per month on PPC and you are only getting 50% Impressions Share (50% of the people who search your keywords see your ad due to insufficient budget) then you would probably consider investing in SEO which would move you up the Natural Results in the medium term at a much lower monthly spend. The added bonus is with a good natural rank you are visible for 100% of searches not just what your budget will allow.
PPC as a building block for solid SEO
We recommend using PPC as the starting point to SEO. SEO is a longer term strategy and you can only optimise your site for a limited number of keywords. What can happen is 6 months in you realise that the keywords you have been optimising for are’nt as profitable as you had initially believed. The benefit of a PPC campaign is you can start with 1,000 keywords, and simply see what generates the most conversions (sales, enquiries etc). Armed with this information you can commence your SEO efforts from more solid foundations.
The optimal situation is you have a high rank in both PPC and the Natural List. Studies show that you will benefit from more than double the traffic when you have a double listing because it has quite an impact on the searcher. They are more likely to visit your site, spend more time there and increasingly likely to enquire or purchase there. Our own experience shows this to be true.
For info on our Google Adwords PPC services click here.
For info on our Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) services click here.
