Advantages of SEO over PPC

If you’ve been in the Digital Marketing space for long enough, you know that SEO vs PPC has always been an ongoing debate. This article will be focusing on the reasons for prioritizing Organic SEO over PPC. You will know why SEO should be preferred over PPC.

Introduction

Formulating strategies for business marketing needs in-depth knowledge and years worth of experience. An experienced digital marketer will suggest going for a blend of SEO and PPC. This is because both strategies have their advantages and disadvantages. To penetrate the market from all the possible directions, you should apply a perfect blend of all the strategies. 

However, the amalgamation of various strategies may vary depending on the market conditions, industry trends, and the buying patterns of potential customers. You’ve to analyze every contributing factor before you finalize your marketing strategy.

What is SEO?

SEO or Search Engine Optimization refers to the tactics by way of which the desired result could appear on the top of the relevant search engine. It is the natural way of optimizing your website to drive in more traffic. SEO is very important for businesses with an online presence. Following are the ways to do SEO:

1. Technical SEO: It is the process of optimizing the website and its structure. So, you are able to rank your content.

2. On-page SEO: It is the practice of optimizing web-pages for the better searchability of other content on the website.

3. Off-page SEO: All the SEO activities performed anywhere other than on the website itself falls under Off-page SEO.

Types of SEO –

1. White Hat SEO: It is a set technique that focuses on getting human attention to the website by targeting the keywords and many other SEO tools.

2. Black Hat SEO: It refers to ranking a website in a search engine in a very short time. It involves violating certain rules of SEO. In other words, malpractice. Consequently, it is not much recommended.

Further, it depends on your business needs and your expectations as to which strategy to proceed with.

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Advantages of SEO

While both the strategies help in the growth of traffic, there are certain factors by which SEO wins over PPC.

• Cost-Effective

You’ll be surprised to know that SEO is practically free of cost. Everything you make as revenue is your profit. Every visitor visiting your website is free of cost. There is no charge on clicks. Even if you hire someone to do it, the long term cost-benefit is much better than that of PPC. Therefore, the ROI (Return on Investment) is brilliantly high. In longer terms, SEO traffic contributes more in revenues than PPC traffic.

• Brand Awareness

SEO focuses on optimizing your website and all the content present there. Above all, Optimization is all about target keywords. This lets you open the doors for discoverability from potential customers from all over the world. Besides, the results drawn by this method are not quick and easy. Which drives away the small and inconsistent players leaving the field to yourself.

Therefore, your competitors cannot buy their way on to the top of search engine page results displaying only the organic results.

• Sustainability

Traffic drawn will be flowing even once you stop doing SEO. It does not happen in PPC. In PPC, once you stop the advertisement, the traffic stops immediately. SEO has more traffic sustaining powers than PPC. It can be carried out without any hassles even if the entity is struck by a financial crisis. As a result, SEO is preferred for long term scalable results.

• Strategic advantage

The fact that it takes a good amount of time and effort, will eliminate many competitors. You cannot buy the results achieved by dedicated SEO. Therefore, optimization is the only way to get ranked. So, if done right, you shall remain on top for a long time even after you stop doing it.

What is PPC?

PPC or Pay Per Click advertising refers to driving huge traffic to your website by paying for the keywords. You pay as the visitors click on the ad link present on the top of search results based on the keyword. In today’s digital world the biggest social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Quora, and many others are using this method to grab the attention of potential users.

By advertising the PPC model you can get instant results. The moment you purchase an ad, it will start showing on the search result page. It shall appear on the top of the page. Besides, it is less time consuming so it could be done anytime.

Also Read: What is Pay-Per-Click (PPC)?

Which one is better for your business SEO or PPC?

Should you apply SEO for driving traffic on your website? Or you should adopt the PPC advertising model? This is the dilemma that you’ve to face now and then while deciding the marketing strategies. Even the most experienced digital marketers get confused when they face the same question. It is not easy to decide which strategy to spend resources and time on. 

Each option has its advantages and disadvantages. It depends on the approach with which you want to get in touch with your potential customers. The market has seen huge success with either or both of the options. A deep analysis of the past trends should always be carried out before finalizing the execution plan. 

 Following are the deciding factors:

• Consistency: It refers to the regularity with which the traffic flows onto the website.
• Sustainability: Sustainability means how long the traffic could be driven to the website once the execution of the strategy stops.
• Budget: Every entity has a certain budget for marketing. The marketing strategy should be formulated after conducting an appropriate cost-benefit analysis.
• Speed: It refers to the time taken by the marketing strategy to drive the traffic towards the website.

It is therefore advised to analyse both the marketing strategies concerning each of the deciding factors.

Conclusion

In conclusion, investing in SEO services provides a whole lot of advantages over PPC. While PPC may seem more apt for the short term but if you’re in the marketing game for long, SEO is the way to go. In the end, it all dials down to the prospective customers who you’re going to target. 

However, such decisions also depend upon the market and industry trends. You could also go with the combination of the two strategies to approach the ever-changing market conditions. That way you could utilize the benefits offered by both the strategies and achieve fruitful results.