Over the years people have been debating the merits of PPC vs. SEO. Honestly, you should be using both. There are several reasons for this.
They Can’t Replace Each Other
These are very different from one another with different strengths and weaknesses so they can’t substitute for each other. For instance, with paid search you can drive a lot of non-branded traffic to your website where they’ll become more familiar with your brand and move forward toward becoming a paying customer. Organic search can possibly do this, but your traffic will come from the middle of the page at best. What it will do though is drive branded traffic your way. When they work together your user will believe you’re more legitimate.
Both SEO and PPC Cost You Something
There are some people who will genuinely argue that PPC is expensive since you pay money every time someone clicks on your ad. However, even organic traffic will cost you in terms of time, money, and expertise. You must also pay for a professional to run either type of marketing campaign for you if you want things to run well.
They Won’t Pick up the Slack for Each Other
You can’t afford to not invest in both types of marketing since you’re working with two very different pools. Instead, they will help drive results for each other. When you choose to drop PPC in hopes of ramping your SEO up in those areas instead, you’ll lose out on some very important traffic.
Deceiving Statistics
In this competition you’ll find statistics to support both types of marketing. Make sure you closely review them prior to reaching your conclusions though. For instance, where is the traffic coming from? If it’s coming from a call campaign, you’ll always get low engagement numbers. While the study may be well-intended, if it’s based on incorrect information it won’t do you any good. Many times you’ll lose a lot of potential customers if you drop one type of marketing. This is why it’s so important to consider all relevant information and not just one-sided arguments.
Stop Focusing on Traffic – Start Looking at Leads and Conversions
Many of the statistics that are available today should be closely analyzed. For instance, in 2014 Conductor performed a study in which they found that organic search is responsible for 64% of all traffic meaning that paid search only generates about 6% of this traffic. Here they’re trying to infer that SEO is more effective than PPC but there are two problems with this:
- This organic search traffic number includes traffic that’s generated in every possible way – including searches where ads were and were not displayed.
- You must also consider whether traffic is your main goal or if you’d rather have leads and conversions. After all, without them traffic won’t do you any good.
The Choice is Clear: Choose Both!
The next time you’re considering what type of online marketing campaign you should run for your website, stop. There isn’t a choice to be made here at all since neither is a substitute for the other. By understanding this and choosing to have them both work together you’re harnessing more power for your website’s marketing. Of course, this is bound to take more time too, but this shouldn’t be an argument for or against either type of marketing campaign especially when you stop to consider that there’s help available to you today. With the Affordable SEO Company you can have both SEO and PPC marketing campaigns working to bring you traffic, leads, and conversions. Many people have done this over the years, there’s no reason you shouldn’t too so contact them today.