SEO v/s PPC: For Maximum Profit the Right Search Marketing Method

Time and again, the oft-repeated statement bears significance that generation of traffic is the fundamental requirement of any online activity; as the success of an online business is determined by the amount of traffic, the pages generate. More footfalls mean more profitability.

The two most powerful traffic generating approaches SEO & PPC; short for search engine optimization and pay per click have been a moot point on the online scene.  Both are different concepts requiring different methodologies and techniques even though in the end they breathe same aim – effectively driving visitors to a website.

All the same, one method can work very well in generating traffic in a given context. While with the other in the same condition, you are likely to encounter difficulties. In such a situation, what should the marketers do to succeed with both the methods?  Under optimal conditions, the marketers should identify their limitations and adopt corrective measures accordingly.

Appropriate Time to Use SEO

Impel and drive a website to the first page, read rank, of the major search engines is among the scope of the duty of SEO techniques.  For any online business, SEO is very vital says a study stating that over 80% of the traffic gets generated for any website which is contributed by search engines.

Leading the race, without any second opinion, is Google and most promotions of SEO target this search engine which brings in over 3.5 billion searches in a single day.

As mentioned above, it is a debatable point regarding the usage of SEO and or PPC. A painstakingly done exercise below would give a picture of circumstances when SEO would prove beneficial for an online business over PPC.

Consistent results- Achieving one’s dream of long-term benefits is not asking for too much. How to achieve the dream?  It is a known fact that SEO has a fairly long period of the development process. Reaching to the first page of search engine results takes awhile and not to mention about getting to the top of the SERPs, which would take even longer time. Thanks to SEO, nevertheless once your website tastes success, a sustained traffic will follow. A word of caution, if you wish to stay on top, keep up with your SEO campaign, continue working to maintain and improve results to enable staying on top. Who doesn’t want to stay on top…remain there always?

Building an authority site- An authority website is nothing but an established resource center for a particular position, where elite members “go to” the website when they need certain information.  Needless to mention an authority website, once commissioned, will be able to generate a whole lot of traffic based on URL recall alone and that is the authority it demands. Ideally, to establish an authority website is by sustainably generating traffic to your pages and in the long run, building up a fair reputation until it becomes popular enough to dominate its own niche market. To generate a regular and sustainable traffic requires a brilliant content backed by some smart SEO design.

Increase the value of your website- Websites are virtual real estates, so to say in a way. If you find the value of your website rising sometime in the near future and it has become a premium website, then it would fetch premium price if at all you have plans to sell. There are different factors at playing increasing its value. Under the purview of SEO, prominent factors are the page rank, constant search engine rankings, popularity link, amount and consistency of traffic generated, so on and so forth.

Be it known that SEO is not a Free Clicks. Some great amount of hard and painstaking work has gone into its creation and development. Not to forget about the investment of time and money in its promotion.

Always remember that SEO does not demand free clicks. It involves a tremendous amount of work in creating and promoting content which takes a great deal of time and money.

Best Time to Use PPC 

Continuing the debate of SEO v/s PPC it brings some important issues.

Another novel method of advertising on search engine results pages is ‘Pay-per-click marketing’. This is basically a way you bid to have your advertisements appear in the sponsored results when a visitors key in a query with your keywords. In other words, it is a way of buying visits to your site, instead of organically earning those visits.

The name pay per click itself signifies pay a fee every time one of the advertisers’ ads is clicked. In other words, you as a promoter need to pay a fee for every user who clicks on the advertisement you are promoting.

Keeping the above fundamentals, PPC marketing can be used in some of the following circumstances as PPC would prove highly beneficial for a successful online business:

Wanting Immediate Results: PPC marketing model will deliver results fast. Rather very fast! In fact, you can count the minutes before a rush of visitors come pouring to your pages. This is by virtue of your PPC campaign that gets approved with your higher bids for priority placement as your ads go live immediately for millions of people to see. Resulting in the instant rush of traffic. Go to see, PPC works brilliantly with product launches, squeeze pages, CPA marketing and affiliate marketing that involves high converting offers, joint venture projects, seasonal promotions, event-focused marketing, and online business promotions.

Seeking High Target Traffic: Based on their demographic data in PPC marketing model, you tend to narrow down your prospects, unlike SEO. Other PPC platforms, like social media sites, allow you to promote through various ranges like the age, gender, income bracket, education level, in addition to the marital status of the people who will view your advertisements. Even popular social media sites like Facebook goes a step ahead and lets you target people based on their hobbies. These make PPC a powerful medium in reaching the narrow band of people your business requires and conducting them to your web pages without any hassle.

Promoting a Time-Sensitive Offer. In marketing and promotion business, race against time is one crucial thing one has to keep a tab about. Products and services come tagged with a shelf life. This holds good even for events. With the date of expiration, always keeps you on your toes to a race against time. It is found that the long gestation process for development of SEO campaigns produces late results. Incidentally, the wisdom and prudence of PPC marketing fit perfectly well for these time-sensitive offers. There is no need to worry, if you are promoting an offer closing shortly, say in the next two days, PPC can get the traffic you need in a matter of swiftly.

Your Website Not Designed For SEO: Generally, SEO requires content-rich and regularly updated websites. This ensures the two things: one, it informs the search engines that your site is relevant, and twit reminds the search engines to always keep your site at the top rank. Not all websites are designed with these options. For example, Squeeze pages do not even have the requisite content worthy of a second glance from Google. For such websites, traffic gets generated from PPC campaigns.

Dominating Search Results for Your Keyword Category: Generally, the PPC results are displayed above the organic search results. This prominent position indicates that in many cases over 50% of the search traffic goes to the top 3 sponsored links. By being absent from PPC you are allowing the loss of all those clicks to your competitors. Nevertheless, you must engage in PPC if you are serious about maximizing your click-share of available searches for keywords that are relevant to your business,

Some of these situations might have a preference towards one marketing method or the other that can be adapted accordingly.