You don’t have to go far to find a debate on which is better for your business: generating organic sales and leads through a search engine optimization (SEO) strategy or forking out truck-loads of cash in order to run a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign.
These debates often end with a combining of the two, something marketers have called search engine marketing, or SEM. But If you’re new to the debate, and want to know more about these two enticing online strategies, check out our list below so that you can decide for yourself which one you’d prefer applying to your business.
SEO or search engine optimization:
In simple terms, SEO is the optimizing of online content so that it may be discovered through search engines like Google.
SEO effectively improves a web page’s chances of arriving at the top of search results, making that web page the first choice and the most tempting for an online-searcher.
Google relies on ‘crawlers’ to analyse the coherency and efficiency of a web page in order to determine if what that web page is providing is beneficial to search queries. If Google is happy with what the ‘crawlers’ report back, Google ranks that page higher than the page’s competitors.
Why businesses go for SEO:
- SEO is free: free from the perspective of not having to pay to apply SEO to online content. But be warned: SEO takes its sweet time in producing results. But do SEO right, and the results will come.
- SEO is virtually perpetual—meaning that a business utilizing SEO properly will continue to rank even after PPC campaigns have stopped. The drawback to this, however, is while companies continue to invest in PPC strategies, those ads will keep showing up.
- SEO cannot be outmanoeuvred the way a PPC ad can by other PPC ads. But given the preference that Google gives PPC, PPC ads can push an SEO result down the list. But take heart, when the money stops, so will the ad, giving SEO back its rightful spot at number one.
PPC or pay per click:
PPC is when a business literally buys its way to the top; they’re paying for “clicks” and accessing an easy and instant position at the top of search results through the buying or bidding of keywords.
This is why businesses go for PPC:
- Quick results! That’s it. PPC provides instant results in gaining website traffic and conversions. But get ready to pay a huge amount of cash for these outcomes.
- PPC offers an idea of how successful a campaign will be and how to improve the likelihood of getting clicks. The problem arrives, however, when the price of keywords goes up as the competition for those keywords grows. And the competition is growing fast!
- PPC is given preference by Google, which means no matter how great a business’s SEO is, a PPC ad that’s paying gets high value real-estate right at the top of search results..
So which is better?
Here at Pixel Village, we value the authenticity and long term investment that comes with SEO.
Though we certainly can see huge benefit in running PPC campaigns, primarily from the acquiring of helpful data through Google’s Keyword Research Tools, we encourage our clients to play the long game and invest in SEO instead.
Yes, SEO takes time, but that’s why we’re here: we want to put the time in so our clients don’t have to. We want to help our clients not only focus on their product and services but ensure that when customers look for our clients, they find them quickly, and effortlessly.
What those who lean towards SEO understand is, though PPC ads get preference over SEO, SEO gets Google validation for its authenticity and efficiency, hence why optimized sites make it to the top of search results when PPC practitioners run out of money.
To recognize the value of this is crucial because if Google validates content, it means a searcher’s goals and desires will be met, achieving a happier customer. And that what any business wants at the end of the day: a happy customer.
Want to know more about Pixel Village? visit www.pixelvillage.co.za now
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