Larby Amirouche Answers: ‘SEO or PPC’?
Most probably you are here because you are struggling to decide on where to invest, search engine optimization (SEO) or pay-per-click (PPC). However, these two marketing strategies have their own pros and cons.
Larby Amirouche, digital marketer will finally answer this question. He will also give a few tips on identifying the best option for your business.
Moreover, Larby Amirouche will look into ways how you can integrate SEO and PPC to gain the best results for your business.
Pros and Cons of SEO
SEO is the process of optimizing your site and its pages to rank in the organic results in different search engines.
Here are the advantages and a few disadvantages when you decided to go with SEO as a marketing strategy.
Your site gains more traffic through SEO. Gaining more traffic means increase in brand awareness. This process allows your business and products to be visible across search engines through your targeted keywords. More aware customers, more potential buyers.
SEO also helps your business to establish a more credible and trust-worthy brand. By using this strategy your brand can become associated with and trusted by searchers by visiting your site and browsing your content. This could lead to a possible purchase. Moreover, SEO allows you to become an authoritative voice around a given topic.
Many users skip ads and trust organic results. Also having strong review and reputation signals in place will deliver further benefit.
SEO is cost-effective, however it is not 100% free. Developing that visibility will take time and effort (money), but there is no direct charge for each impression from clicks.
This strategy gives your business better return on investment (ROI). How? Because of its cost-effectivity organic search engine traffic can provide an improved ROI over traditional forms of paid media.
Unlike paid search marketing, organic traffic is not put on hold even though you stop paying. Therefore, efforts to develop organic traffic can sustain a business despite a reduced cost on marketing efforts.
However, SEO does have its cons. In many cases, organic results take time to rank. You would have to wait a decent amount of time before you see the result of your efforts.
This strategy also requires you to develop content assets to achieve strong organic visibility. However, not all businesses have the resources to address this need.
In addition, tactics such as safe, sustainable link building can be difficult to master, and often, a strategy is needed, along with expert support.
Pros and Cons of PPC
Users will always see your paid ads. This type of paid searches dominates above-the-fold content. Typically there are four ads on desktop and three on mobile, therefore these are more visible, even if they choose to scroll past them.
Compared to SEO content, PPC advertisements are more straightforward. You have more control and more space for delivering your marketing messages. You can add calls, locations, sitelinks, pricing and bullet points when creating ads that dominate the page.
Aside from usual ads, PPC also allows you to create visual product ads. This option can help a user to see what they will be clicking on. This kind of ad can really improve the click-through rate by offering a feature not available in organic search.
Similar to SEO, you can also increase your brand visibility through PPC.
Moreover, PPC provides a laser-targeted way to deliver your ads to your preferred audience. Ads can be targeted by search keywords, time of day, day of the week, geography, language, device and audiences based on previous visits.
One of the best benefits of executing a PPC campaign is its quick turn-around time. It can be created in days and ramped up in weeks. Therefore, this strategy is more agile. You can easily get rapid feedback on a new product launch by running a short PPC ad campaign.
As with organic search, there are many benefits to paid search advertising. However, there are also some pitfalls for advertisers to be wary of.
First, PPC can be expensive though this is not always the case, but costs can quickly add up. If you are targeting entire countries or running international campaigns, those costs can easily pile up. Moreover, PPC requires constant investment.
On the other hand, when you stop investing on your ads, your lead generation also dries up.
Another disadvantage of PPC is the bidding wars with other advertisers, which can drive costs up.
In addition, PPC is relatively easy to copy. If a competitor notices you are running ads, they can do similar ads too. Lastly, successful PPC needs skilled management and optimization.
Which One is Better for Your Business?
Larby Amirouche cannot decide this for you because this will depend on the demand of your business.
However, Larby Amirouche has a few questions you might want to ask yourself so you have an idea of what is the best option for you.
1. How big is your online advertising budget?
Just like any other business decisions, you need to determine how much you or your business can invest on advertising efforts. If you have a low or limited budget you can opt for an SEO campaign. If you have a way lower budget you can try PPC.
With PPC strategy, you can reap benefits such as faster testing for website variables to improve conversion rates.
2. How expensive are the average CPCs in your industry?
You should also determine how much other companies in your industry are paying for ads.
PPC allows users to bid what they’re willing to pay for a single keyword click. This fee is referred to as “cost-per-click” (CPC).
There is a wide range of fees for CPCs, therefore, its best to research.
3. How competitive are organic rankings in your industry?
Aside from CPCs, you must also determine how competitive the SERPs are for your target keywords. To have an idea, you can use the Google External Keyword Research Tool. This will tell you the estimated competition level for these terms, as well as the number of advertisers bidding on those keywords and average CPCs.
Final Thoughts
Based on the pros and cons discussed by Larby Amirouche both SEO and PPC have their strengths and weaknesses. With these unique characteristics, one cannot be considered “better” than the other. However, there will be a strategy more appropriate for your business.
Another thing for Larby Amirouche, both SEO and PPC take a lot of work but they can be a fantastic addition to your marketing strategy.
