Budgeting SEO vs PPC - A Quick Guide
- elee0057
- Nov 6, 2021
- 2 min read
Being successful in integrated marketing communications (IMC) requires the holistic understanding of principles and tools for integration. One of the key decisions marketers struggle with making often is which tool integration method is more suitable for their business. whether they should allocate budget towards pay-per-click advertising (PPC) or towards focus on cultivating a natural search engine strategy with search engine optimisation (SEO). To aid marketers towards making the right allocation choice for their business it is crucial to compare the two.
SEO vs PPC
Simply put, SEO focuses on driving organic traffic to your website. This is done though optimisation of web pages to leverage their position of SERPs or search engine results pages. This can be achieved through many strategies some being, content creation whereby creating content such as articles or blogs that may enhance the visibility of your webpage, or link building which aims at increasing the number of links in a webpage. Arguable, now days it is found that business owners uncommonly adopt SEO strategies despite the benefits it has to offer. Those that do, combine SEO strategies to be used in conjunction for the long-term success of business marketing. On the downside, investing in this option requires a strategy that will outperform your competitors as search engine algorithms are uncontrolled.
PPC on the other hand is essentially paid advertising. Advertisers can list their ads on search engines for a fee per click. This method disregards search engine algorithms and allows you quickly grab the attention of users enabling you to expand your reach much faster than SEO. However, these costly clicks do not always lead to sales and like a switch, the moment you stop investing, you stop receiving leads.
Is two better than one?
Now you’re probably wondering which of the two is the right tool for your business. Of course, your choice would be heavily influenced by the industry and your business goals but generally for short-term success, using PPC is more suitable whereas for long-term success it is desirable to organise a SEO strategy. This doesn’t mean either tools are mutually exclusive and can’t be used in conjunction. In fact, many businesses integrate both methods to balance short and long-term success. Ultimately, running PPC ads provide feedback that can inform ways to enhance and improve your SEO strategy.
I think you make an excellent point about the value of integrating SEO and PPC, depending on the desired short or long-term goals. I recently read an article in HBR - Do search ads really work?; Matt Halprin talks about the value of using search instead of display ads, as they are far more relevant to consumers. I particularly like his approach towards embracing reviews, even the negative ones to build trust. Like you have written in your post, this kind of feedback can assist with problem-solving and further enhances SEO. Elee0057, thank you for your quick guide to SEO and PPC - it was very useful!