Is SEO or PPC better in 2020?

Not sure whether your online business needs SEO or PPC? Let’s break them down and see their potential benefits and identify which one is better.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

SEO is a common digital marketing practice in today’s world, which helps to organically attract visitors. It is a collection of various practices that improves the visibility of your website on search engines, driving more organic traffic to your site.

SEO practices ensure that your website is in-line with the search engine ranking factors. By aligning your website with ranking factors precisely, search engines perceive your content more relevant against particular searches.

SEO is a work of patience, and it takes time to achieve your ultimate objectives. However, the right SEO strategy guarantees long-standing results.

PPC (Pay-Per-Click)

Also known as search advertising and paid marketing, PPC is a popular form of advertisement in the online world. Often, new businesses have a hard time getting traffic with SEO. That’s where PPC comes to help.

Search engines and social media platforms let you design and run your digital ads on their platforms. As the name suggests, the PPC model of advertising charges you only for the clicks you receive on your ads.

SEO Vs. PPC

There are two major differences; SEO brings free traffic to your site but it takes time while PPC displays your ads above organic search results. The second difference is that SEO is free while PPC costs you money.

In most cases, SEO & PPC work best when deployed together with the right strategy.

Let’s see the benefits of both SEO and PPC and find insights to determine where they fit within a marketing plan.

SEO improve organic traffic

There are two types of online traffic; one comes through organic search results, and the other comes through paid advertising.

SEO focuses on improving your organic traffic. Let’s begin with the benefits of SEO.

●      Improves visibility

The foremost result of SEO is your improved visibility on the search engine. Since SEO is a mix of strategies that ensure your website is perfectly in-line with search engine ranking factors, so search engines find your content relevant. The more the relevancy, the more visibility.

●      Build awareness

SEO improves your visibility in search results and puts your business in front of your potential consumers the same way advertising would. Resultantly, SEO builds your brand awareness.

●      Branding

With improved visibility around certain search terms is a great way for business branding. Your target audience perceives you as a resourceful platform around a certain topic. Ultimately, it leads to better sales and business growth.

●      Build your credibility

Having great visibility in search results around a particular niche influences your audience, and they perceive you as a credible source. The majority of online consumers trust organic search results and click them in pursuit of something. Being highly visible build strong credibility of your brand/online business and indicates that you’re a trusted, credible, and authoritative platform.

●      Generate website traffic

As a result of the benefits mentioned above, you get the all-important website traffic that you need for business growth. Increasing the number of visitors coming to your site provides more opportunities, bringing more sales to your business.

●      Cost-effective

SEO is neither free nor easy, but it’s certainly cost-effective. Traffic coming from organic search results is free…not entirely.

With SEO, you don’t need to pay search engines for anything. The SEO cost depends on whether you are doing it yourself or using the services of an SEO agency. In case you go with a professional SEO agency, there’s certainly a cost associated with it. On the other hand, learning and doing it yourself requires time & effort only.

It would take time to get fruitful results from SEO, but it’s worth spending time & money on it.

●      Sustainability

Unlike PPC, the results don’t dry up the moment you stop paying. SEO is a constant practice and offer more sustainability than PPC.

●      PPC is laser-targeted

Let’s see how PPC is different from SEO and what makes it a potential choice for online businesses.

●      Position on SERPs

The biggest benefit of PPC is that ads are displayed on top of the organic search results. PPC dominates above-the-fold results.

PPC ads appear before organic search results, and users always see them, even if they ignore & scroll past them.

●      Visual product ads

One of the biggest benefits of PPC is visual product ads. Google allows you to create visual shopping ads where you can add product photos as well. It gives users an idea of what to expect from your ad. Visual shopping ads provide an excellent CTR (Click Through Rate).

●      Targeting

PPC is a sure way to target your ideal audience. You can set different targets like keywords, time of the day, the geographical location of the target audience, language, and much more. In short, it’s a laser-targeted method to approach your potential consumer base.

●      Quick results

For new businesses, customer acquisition is a hard job. Developing good visibility and ranking takes time. On the other hand, a PPC campaign can be designed in days and ramp-up in weeks. If you set the right target targets in your ad campaign, you might see an avalanche of sales within a few weeks. However, the results might dry up the moment you stop spending in PPC.

●      Budget controlled

PPC lets you control your advertising budget. You can choose how much are you willing to spend per day.

●      Split testing

Chances are you would find it hard to design the perfect ad. But thanks to A/B testing in PPC, you can design a few different ads and target particular groups of audiences. Based on the results, you can choose the ideal campaign for your business.

●      Cost-effective

PPC can be cost-effective if managed smartly. A well designed & managed PPC account can generate enough leads for your business without burning a hole in your pocket.

Its cost-effectiveness lies in its use. If you select the right targets and scale your campaign strategically, then it would be cost-effective.

SEO or PPC?

It is not easy to pick one of them without considering your unique business needs & objectives.

If you’re operating a small local business within a limited geographical area with a little competition, then SEO can bring enough leads for your business. Using the right local keywords can improve your visibility and ranking quickly.

If you have an e-commerce store that’s competing with a high-ranked page from Amazon and other big online stores, then SEO should not be your only choice. You’re going to struggle if you choose SEO only.

In an ideal world, the wise decision would be to go with both SEO and PPC. You should set up an ad campaign to give the required initial boost to your business and keep implementing the SEO at the same time.

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