Monday 16 April 2012

Which is better, seo or ppc?


An age old discussion amongst online marketers is which is better; search engine marketing or pay per click marketing. Even though the aim of both is to drive targeted visitors to your web site, how this is achieved and the amount it costs differs substantially.

For those who don’t know, pay per click is where an advertiser only pays when their ad is clicked, whereas seo is the optimisation of your web site so that it appears at the top of the organic search rankings

There are several pay per click platforms however for the purpose of this article, I'm going to concentrate on the search network in Google AdWords. Google AdWords is by far the most popular paid advertising platform with the the biggest share of the market.

Typically, pay per click and search engine optimization costs are quite comparable. Some people think ppc advertising campaigns are pricey because it can often cost quite a few pounds per click whereas seo does not cost anything per click and consequently assume search engine optimization is less costly. If you calculated the price of seo and divide this by the number of clicks which you receive, you will discover the costs are fairly similar to pay per click costs. The major difference between the costs of seo compared with Google adwords is when the investment is required and when the effects start to show.. Some people think that seo is a less expensive substitute for pay per click. This really is not the case though, and run correctly, the costs will likely be very similar. Unless managed correctly, a Google AdWords campaign can generate quite a few wasted clicks, significantly escalating the cost of driving relevant visitors to your site. The advertiser of course does not pay for wasted clicks in seo campaigns although a substantial investment is necessary to get sites to the top of search engines before they start to drive targeted traffic to your website.


Pay-per-click is relatively scalable. You are able to set a daily budget for each campaign along with the maximum bid for each keyword. It is possible to start with a low budget and as your campaign begins to deliver returns, you're able to increase your spend. The crucial element is always to prevent wasted clicks.

SEO returns have a tendency to be all or nothing at all. It takes a huge level of work to get a site to the top of Yahoo and also a reasonable level of time. You are unlikely to get lots of clicks until your web site is at the top of Yahoo as a result of typical click habits. Most users only click on ads at the top of search engines and don't go beyond the first page. It's for this reason that seo is not overly scalable.

Ideally, if the budget allows, you should run both seo and pay per click campaigns. The pay per click brings scalability and delivers short term results, whilst the seo campaign delivers substantial long term results.

Usually companies start off with a modest Adwords campaign and slowly increase their budget. When the AdWords campaign is showing great profits, they add an seo campaign to enhance search traffic and to make the digital campaign far more efficient.