It’s time to review some of the most crucial aspects of business advertising: PPC vs. SEO. We’ve covered these topics previously, but it’s well worth further exploration given the implications for effective marketing for companies of any size.
In a nutshell, PPC (Pay-Per-Click) vs. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) involves an intensive focus on either paid advertising or organic Internet visibility. The two concepts aren’t at odds with one another, but both require time and investment to acquire mastery and increase sales conversions.
PPC for Businesses
You may already know that PPC allows you to bid on searchable keywords (ones that relate to your business) to be used to build ads for your brand. These ads will include the following elements . . .
- An attention-grabbing headline
- A one/two sentence product or service description
- A URL that will lead to the business website
- Call-To-Action (CTA) – encouraging the customer on what to do, and why they should
PPC often takes the potential customer through a type of ad funnel. The first click navigates them to a landing page (such as an interactive quiz or video), and ultimately to a place to make purchases from you. The final step is what we could call a “conversion.”
Advantages of PPC
- It’s easy to track ad performance with techniques like A/B testing.
- You can employ demographic-specific, targeted ad campaigns.
- This is a faster way to gain business visibility, whereas SEO takes longer.
SEO for Businesses
SEO is all about making your business website appear on the important search engines (Google, first and foremost).
You can use SEO strategies (such as link-building or on-page SEO) to promote either your entire brand, or specific services. An automotive dealership could use SEO to add more emphasis to their sections for “new cars” or “repair service” by creating campaigns to boost those key terms. There are numerous ways to accomplish that through content creation (videos, articles, photos, social media) and/or tweaking the technical aspects of your website.
Advantages of SEO
- It’s more affordable for new businesses.
- If you’re patient, SEO can produce substantial long-term results for your web presence.
- SEO is essentially a way of building trust with Google, and therefore, your customer base as well.
Which Is More Important?
As usual, we recommend pursuing a hybrid approach whenever possible, given your business’ budgetary constraints. Paid advertising can provide a tremendous boost in sales traffic, but not every company needs to devote thousands of dollars per month to it immediately (if ever). SEO, on the other hand, may be more essential, since very few reputable businesses last long without a Google Business Profile, a decent website, and other forms of online presence.
Would you like to eliminate the guesswork of managing PPC vs. Organic SEO? Then consider our help for conquering all of your online and traditional advertising objectives. DigiSphere Marketing covers virtually every angle with SEO, reputation management, podcasting for businesses, branding, franchise marketing, conquest email strategies, and more. If you’d like to discover the secrets to these proven marketing tools, then contact us anytime at our Sarasota headquarters by calling 941-803-4141.
