SEO VS PPC – Which Is Better For My Business?

The simple answer to this question is both! When setting up and managed properly, both SEO and PPC provide relevant traffic that results in leads and sales. One is not better than the other per se, but both have unique advantages.

SEO Advantages:

  1. Cost for clicks: You are not paying per click.
  2. More options for users: You are coming up in the organic section of the search engines where many people navigate to and click on.
  3. More freedom: Some categories of businesses Google does not allow paid search ads. For example, just one category is bail bonds services. However, for SEO, there are no restrictions. In some cases such as this and others, SEO allows freedom for your ads to show when queried.

SEO Disadvantages:

  1. No instant gratification: It will take 3 and sometimes up to 6 months for onsite and offsite optimizations to take effect and start showing positive movement in rankings.
  2. Can get expensive: Although you are not paying for the click, you will typically have to pay for the service of SEO. Remember, SEO is vast when it comes to what can be done. Some SEO programs are basic, while others are very comprehensive.

    Depending upon where one ranks coming into doing an SEO program, and the competition will determine how much onsite and offsite SEO needs to be done. This would include but is not limited to, keyword optimization, blogging, article submissions, press releases, other onsite content creation, meta, title tag, script and headers optimizations, and more. The more services that have to be done with SEO usually results in a higher monthly management fee.

    SEO fees typically range of $500.00 to $5,000.00 per month. That being said, ROI is the main focus. If a company is bringing in $5,000 per month from organic keywords and not paying 3-5 dollars per click as an example, the math is there for sure showing benefits.
  3. Algorithm updates: We have all been there before when Google does an algorithm update and results in rankings tanking. Although the negative impact can be recovered, it will take some time to do. Not all updates will do this, but sometimes they can, and this is a risk that goes along with the SEO world.
  4. Amount of keywords being ranked on page one: Even with top-performing SEO accounts, one may have a couple of hundred keyword phrases on page one. Although this is fantastic to have, SEO keyword rankings will never have the number of keywords on page one as a PPC account can.

PPC Advantages:

  1. Fast Rankings: You can have hundreds of keywords ranking on page one in a matter of a day or so.
  2. Quickly get traffic: Because a client will have all the keywords they want right away coming up on page one within their targeted areas, traffic will increase very quickly.
  3. Quickly get leads and sales: Because you are getting traffic, the leads and sales should follow suit.
  4. Real-time results: The client can log in to their PPC platform such as Google Ads to see clicks/total traffic, cost per click, average ranking, website form leads, sales and even calls in some cases if tracking is set up that way. This gives the customer a sense of gratification and transparency.
  5. YouTube & Display network: Outside of Google paid ads on Google search, there are other platforms one can take advantage of using PPC. For example, YouTube, which is the 2nd largest search engine in the world! Also, Google has millions of partner sites where one can advertise on through the display network. This is essentially the online billboard highways of the internet.

PPC Disadvantages:

  1. Costs can add up: You are paying for each click and this can get expensive. However, the expense is all relative to your ROI, which is why tracking is so important.
  2. Not always the safest bet: There have been times where Google removes the serving of ads for certain industries. Over the years, we have seen several get pulled, and as a result, are no longer able to even advertise on Google. Just a few examples of this would be 3rd party tech repair, bail bonds, and payday loans. Putting all of your eggs in the basket could be potentially dangerous if this were to happen in your industry.
  3. Paying for management services: This is not 2003 where one could copy and paste keywords into their account and create a couple of ads. Today’s PPC systems are advanced, somewhat complicated, comprehensive, tedious, and changing a lot. One needs to know what they are doing when it comes to setting up and managing an account. If not, it could lead to thousands of wasted dollars being spent and having a very negative attitude concerning PPC marketing. It is highly advised that one hires a Google Premier Partner to do this type of marketing on behalf of the client. Again, it is not a bad thing to do this as everything is relative to ROI.