In this post, looking at the on-going debate over SEO versus PPC and which is better, we'll also talk about the fact that "timing is everything."
Both marketing methods can be rather expensive, so your resources may determine which type of campaign you'll run. If you have plenty of capital to spread around you might want to exercise both options. With PPC, you pay for ads to run and then also pay per click from a visitor, thus the name. With SEO, you pay to have a professional, content rich website built with proper keywords and back-links in order to get first-page ranking. Either way you go, it can get rather pricy real fast. If you want to do the work yourself, there's a learning curve in both situations.
We'll examine the time factor in two ways - the time you invest into the project and also the time it takes to see a return on your efforts. The time and energy you pour into SEO is primarily in the beginning (doing keyword research, building your website, sprinkling content with back-links which all must be done precisely according to the rules governed by the search engines). With PPC, there's not near as much work at the start, but constant monitoring and tweaking is necessary throughout the campaign.
Absolutely, if you need fast results like yesterday or if you have a time-sensitive weekend special going, then PPC is your answer. PPC brings traffic almost immediately and lots of it. Conversely, SEO has a much longer gestation period. Another scenario where PPC is the winner is when your business is new and you want a tremendous impact with a large amount of visibility to a targeted sector and/or geographic area. Seem too good to be true? Well, it's true and there is a catch. That's coming later.
Think about SEO as a less risky investment which yields a more long-term profit. Also, one could think of it like writing a book that winds up on the best-seller list. Once you've done the work, the royalties from those sells keep coming in for many years to come even though you're not still working on the book. With SEO, the same is true for the most part. Now, you update and add information to your website from time to time, but it's not labor intensive. After the website and quality content is in place as a strong infrastructure, it's not going anywhere. And you can enjoy sustained traffic for a long time to come plus the effects of URL recall. Once you've gotten ranked on the first page of Google, it's much easier to camp out there. Whereas, if you're shelling out several thousand dollars per month for PPC ads on that highly coveted page, the day you stop paying, the ads stop and all your traffic goes bye-bye. You got it, that's the catch with PPC. Am I beginning to show my bias?
In this ubiquitous debate, hardly anyone talks about the psychology of it all. So let's go there. Do you like walking onto a car dealership lot and strolling through the vehicles until YOU FIND what you're looking for? Or do you like it when the salesperson marches right up to sell you something just because you're there? The internet stats will prove my point. Consistently, somewhere between 80-90% of all online clicks are done on the organic search results, NOT on the ads at the periphery of the page. With the organic search, the person gets to browse around and FIND what they need. But the paid ads are strategically placed to sell the person simply because he or she is there, on the page. Enough said.
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