Online marketing is one of the most convenient ways a brand can reach its potential customers. This is because the opportunities of generating sales online are infinite. However, despite being a huge blessing to businesses and marketing professionals, online marketing can often be challenging especially when one is not knowledgeable of all the tricks and plays. This exact reason is why we have summarized the two most extensive online marketing techniques for beginners to get a clear understanding of the ins and outs. These two techniques are SEO and PPC.
What is SEO?
Search Engine Optimization is a familiar term for marketing professionals. Online businesses depend heavily on search engine results for generating traffic. Each search engine has an algorithm built within that lists your paragraphs and ranks them.
According to a recent study by Forbes, about 75% of people don’t scroll past the first page on any search engine, and 60% of all traffic goes to the first three search results. For this reason, every online business wants those top three spots to display its content. SEO helps your product appear on organic search results.
What is PPC?
Pay-per-click marketing is an online advertising model that businesses use to drive traffic to a product advertisement or website. In this model, businesses pay once an interested buyer clicks on their ad.
PPC is highly effective and profitable to both big and small businesses alike. It’s a direct ticket to good exposure and high visibility for your products and services.
The Differences Between SEO and PPC:
Many people get confused between SEO and PPC, which is more effective and would drive more traffic. To help provide a clear explanation, here is a side by side comparison based on traffic potential, conversion rates, total costs, search engine location, and usability:
Conversion Rate:
When it comes to conversion rate, you look at how likely someone coming from PPC advertisements or organic search results is to buy your product.
Due to the optimization of PPC campaigns, customers clicking on your ads are more likely to buy your product than someone coming from organic search results.
This is because organic search results are not 100% accurate and use specific keywords to generate results that may or may not be something a user is looking for.
However, in PPC campaigns, you will only get the users that are 100% interested in your product.
Therefore, although SEO generates good traffic, its conversion rate is not as high as PPC.
Search Result Location:
PPC advertisements can be found both above and below organic results; however, a business might have to pay a higher cost per click or CPC to appear on the first page.
In the case of SEO, your on-site and off-site SEO needs to be thoroughly optimized for it to show up on the first page of search results. Despite this, organic search results always appear in the middle of the page.
Total Cost:
SEO traffic tends to be free if you are well-versed in content writing; however, if you are not, you might need to hire someone or get an SEO service from a reputable marketing agency to ensure profitability.
Marketing agencies tend to have SEO service packages that best suit your requirements. Since SEO can give long-term results, it may be a bit costly, but it is worth the cost due to the longevity it gives your advertisements.
PPC’s benefit over SEO is that you only have to pay when your advertisement is being clicked on. Another benefit you have with PPC is determining your daily budget in advance and avoiding going over the budget. However, PPC can be expensive in the long run and is considered a short-term strategy due to its high costs.
Traffic Potential:
SEO solely focuses on organic traffic, naturally driving more traffic towards your advertisement or website than PPC campaigns. However, you still have to pay for these campaigns.
When your website or advertisement is search engine friendly, then it has the potential to have a continuous flow of traffic 24/7 without any additional charges. In contrast, PPC campaigns do not guarantee continuous traffic even if it costs more.
Usability:
SEO requires a lot of time and effort investment. Sometimes, your website may not get listed for the specific keywords you are aiming for. For this reason, you need to hire an SEO content writing expert to ensure that your website or advertisement is ranking high on search engines.
PPC campaigns tend to procure great results; however, you need to have a firm grip on its essentials to get such results. For this reason, you can either take a PPC campaign course or hire a PPC expert.
Therefore both SEO and PPC are challenging to do unless you have the required experience and know-how.
Conclusion: Which is Better?
To ask which marketing technique is superior is the wrong question to ask. For businesses, the best path to success and long-term profitability is to apply both SEO and PPC techniques in the marketing strategy of their products.
In this way, your online marketing campaign can give you faster results with the help of PPC while also driving a continuous stream of organic traffic with the help of SEO, in addition to higher conversion rates. This amalgamation of marketing strategies has the potential to establish your brand as a force to be reckoned with in the online marketing hemisphere.
