PPC Advertising vs. SEO

There are two ways to get traffic to any site. You can either get traffic to your website for free, such as SEO or you can use paid advertising; PPC (pay-per-click).

Often, there is a debate and constant warring between which strategy will be the best strategy to implement in exposing your site to the masses.

In actuality, Internet Marketing is a numbers game, and so the more targeted traffic you can get to your website, the more you will convert, and the more money you’ll make.

So which strategy is the best, free or paid?

Search Engine Optimization:

Free marketing strategies; such as SEO, are just as good as paid marketing, if not better. For example, when the majority of people go searching for information online, they go to Google or any other search engine and type in a phrase; such as “How to Cook and Clean”. The results they get back are divided into two parts, and that is Organic and Paid advertising. These differences are usually easy to identify. The organic results are listed on the left hand side and are listed 1-10 through a series of pages, while the paid are listed on the far right hand side.

When doing a search people will often decide which way is best to resolve their dilemma or situation, and most often people tend to use the free results. Thus, this is enough to indicate that if you want to get highly targeted and free traffic to your website it would be a good idea to get into the Organic results. However, many things are involved, including getting backlinks to your site, making sure you have the right keyword density, and optimizing your site. The downside to Search Engine Optimization is that in order to get your website ranked high, it can be very time consuming. This is a reason why many marketers choose to skip SEO and use Pay-Per-Click with Google Adwords, Bing, or Yahoo Overture.


PAY PER CLICK (PPC):

In short, Pay-Per-Click is when you tell Google; or any other company, how much you want to be charged every time your advertisement is clicked. The higher the amount that you set to be charged will often determine how high your website will rank in the search engines. On the other hand, if you set a low amount then your PPC may not give you good results.

The “pros” of PPC marketing is that it takes a small amount of time to get up and running, but the “con” is that you can not just set up a campaign and expect to make tons of money. PPC is a science and should be implemented with strategy, therefore doing the homework is crucial because if you don’t choose the right keywords and/or charges you could end up losing tons of money and FAST. So PPC takes skill, learning, and possibly experience to succeed.


In short, SEO is a great way for beginners to get a site ranked high in organic results. SEO may be frustrating but once you succeed with SEO the benefits are great. This is also true with PPC, but there is much more risk involved since your success is dependent on your money and skill. Overall, it’s necessary to research both SEO and PPC as much as possible before leaning upon either.

Thanks for the tips. I am thinking of using PPC to promote my own products but am nervous about jumping in.

And there is a sure reason why. If you don't make the proper planning, keyword research and conversion optimization you'll end up with a lots of wasted money. Nothing else, nothing more.
If you - on the contrary - make all the necessary steps of preparation you can make use of it.

"Natural" Search Engine Optimization
Today, there is a big myth that natural search engine optimization is inexpensive and easy.

Yet still, natural search engine optimization usually gives you a much higher return on investment than pay per click. This is true for two main reasons:
1. More searchers click the natural search engine results versus the pay per click ads, so you'll get much more traffic for less.
2. One of the biggest factors to improving your rankings with natural search engine optimization is by boosting your "Link Popularity" by acquiring or paying for links that point to your web site. These links give you lasting results by giving you top rankings and traffic from the search engines. Plus, the links themselves will provide a significant boost in long term traffic.
With that said, the biggest weakness of natural search engine optimization is the time required to generate links and "tweak" your web pages and keywords to get those prized high rankings you so desire. It can literally take 3 months or more to finally enjoy the benefits of your search engine optimization campaign.


Pay Per Click Search Engine Advertising
The biggest benefit of pay per click is the fact that it will provide you with an immediate boost of qualified visitors, lead and sales giving you fast results within just hours or days. In fact, a pay per click advertising program is your best option if you seek fast results and a good return on investment while you are waiting for your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) program to "ramp up."


So, as a short term strategy pay per click gives you the clear advantage over SEO. But, the disadvantage is the cost involved. Depending on the market demand for your keywords and clicks, your PPCSE campaign can generate tons of traffic and can cost hundreds, even thousands per day. With various optimization strategies you can lower your costs, but over the long term natural search engine optimization will give you a higher return on your marketing dollar.

good article,

i think seo is best then ppc because ppc is too costly

Good article. It thus explain the difference of the two in a more detailed and easy to understand lingo.

I can't argue with SEO to comes first but there are some occasions where you will find the PPC produces best results. But after all here too PPC is merged together with SEO like Facebook ads.

In PPC you share your seat with many others...but in SEO top ranking, you are the only VIP above other less important ones in user point of view...what say?

I prefer seo than the ppc..as ppc is much costlier than the seo and is a good tool get the organic traffic to your site..

PPC can be tricky and expensive. Make sure you know your budgets and stick to them. It really is like an auction with competitors bidding. Although, it can be difficult it can also be very targeted. So, good luck with your PPC program.

Thanks for these tips. But i will say that both of them work in parallel to get good traffic to your website.

PPc or seo..I think seo is the best option than ppc..PPC need more trick than seo..You can also use websites for marketing which is a part of seo..