There are two primary methods in regards to reeling in more customers: Search Engine Optimization or Pay-Per-Click. Several years ago businesses were mainly preoccupied with choosing the right retail points to attract more customers. As the reality has been changing, the principal things to consider when reaching the target audience refer to the online environment. Thus, businesses are willing to make their websites and social media profiles visible to users online.

There are several effective methods to reach out to a great number of customers online. The most popular ones are search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. Both these methods are highly efficient but each of them implements different tactics to achieve the desired result.

Businesses use both SEO and PPC in their strategies, either separately or together. However, the particular sphere of business operation and competitive environment predict which of these two techniques would be more efficient for the particular company. This article talks about SEO and PPC, provides a comparison between them, and helps to define which of these methods would be more suitable for your company.

Search Engine Optimization or Pay-Per-Click

Comparing these two technologies would not be appropriate as there are more differences rather than similarities between them. However, to demonstrate all the positive sides of each method, it is worth having a look at its essentials first.

What is Search Engine Optimization?

This abbreviation stands for search engine optimization – website promotion in the online environment. Most people use search engines such as Google or Bing to find the things they are looking for. To make your website visible to online users, SEO techniques are used.

SEO is a complex term that consists of multiple components that are aimed to improve the overall website ranking. These components could be classified into two main groups depending on the promotional method applied.

The first bunch of techniques is called on-page SEO and refers to on-site optimization. Performing keyword research, creating texts, taking care of technical characteristics of the website belong to this group of methods. You can use a Keyword Research Tool like LongTailPro to find keywords for your business.

Other SEO methods are classified as off-site or off-page optimization. It means that the website promotion is done with the involvement of external sources. For example, link building and guest posting are the most common approaches used in off-page SEO. Owing to guest posting services such as Adsy.com, you may create articles with the description of your company and the link to your website on other blogs to let more people know about your brand.

What is Pay-Per-Click?

Another popular method businesses utilize in their marketing strategies is PPC that stands for pay-per-click advertising. This method is also implemented within search engines but in a totally different way compared to SEO.

PPC also known as paid advertising is the service offered by Google Ads for displaying your announcements over the organic search results. Marketers bid for certain keywords to get a chance for displaying an ad with the link to the website in the SERP top.

Even when the advertisement is displayed once a user enters a corresponding search query, businesses have to pay for it only in case the ad is clicked. The price for the click is determined while marketers place bids on keywords.

The benefits of Search Engine Optimization

Durable effect

When done properly, search engine optimization is supposed to improve the website ranking gradually. Otherwise, a fast leap in the website positions on search results pages might be considered suspicious by Google. Even though the results of SEO is not visible in the first few weeks, it brings long-term effect, which is the greatest benefit for any business.

Local search

Another advantage of SEO is that it could be the right tool for making the website highly visible for local searches. With the help of certain keywords related to the particular place and special SEO techniques, your website would appear high on the results page when a search is done on the corresponding location.

PPC reinforcement

The power of SEO is that it could also strengthen the effect of the paid advertisement efforts. When people see the same website both in the organic and paid search results, they would likely visit it.

Comprehensive analytics

Most SEO tools used for website optimization provide comprehensive data on its performance. That way some applications could depict how the keywords perform, while others show the amount of time that users spend on the web page. All this data helps to make websites better and modernize them constantly. For instance, if you notice that users leave the website quickly, you might consider creating graphic materials for websites or rewriting the text to make it easy to read for people.

The advantages of PPC

Sales boost

The main benefit of paid advertising is its high potential for improving the company’s online sales. When an advertisement is placed at the top of the results page, users see it first. Thus, they would probably click on it and explore the website further. To make sure that a user stays for long on the website, design it properly by considering every minor detail.

Brand awareness

This aspect is interrelated with the first advantage of PPC as it also refers to the high visibility of the website. Users would likely remember your brand and recognize it further when it appears within the paid ad results.

SEO reinforcement

Similar to the SEO impact on PPC, the paid advertisement has a reverse effect as well. Paid ads help to reinforce the SEO effect by attracting other businesses and individual customers who would be interested in linking back to your website. Backlinks are powerful in improving the website’s domain authority and ranking.

What to choose for your business: Search Engine Optimization or Pay-Per-Click?

After exploring the main characteristics of search engine optimization and paid advertising, it is possible to decide which method would be more suitable for your company. Even if one of the approaches would be more applicable, it does not exclude the possibility to use another one. Thus, you can use both SEO and PPC but define the proportion of time and budget resources allocated to each of those.

If you are new to the market or have recently created a business website, then the first thing to start with would be SEO. It will help you to strengthen domain authority and lift the website on the search results pages.

In case you have been already using SEO for a while and want to boost sales or promote certain products, then PPC is the right thing to use. By creating paid advertisement you will pay the customers’ attention to the particular thing that corresponds to the keyword search.

When you consider using both PPC and SEO in your marketing campaign, keep in mind that the former is rather costly. It should be preferably used for a limited amount of time to achieve the desired goal. Meanwhile, SEO is the ongoing strategy that ensures the long-term results and requires fewer costs.

Conclusion on Search Engine Optimization or Pay-Per-Click

If you decide whether PPC or SEO is better for your business website promotion, you should define your business goals first of all. In case you want to have short-term results, then PPC is the right option to choose. In other cases, SEO would be the preferred method for website promotion. Anyway, you can use both methods in your marketing strategy to obtain the best results.