Digital Marketing Marketing & Sales

PPC vs SEO: Which is Right For Your Business?

Written by Maulik Patel

Whether it’s a huge enterprise or a brand-new startup, they often are uncertain as to how they should best allocate their marketing budget when it comes to investing in either pay-per-click (PPC) or search engine optimisation (SEO).

This article will provide a comprehensive look at which is best for your business’s growth.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

According to WordStream, PPC is “a model of internet marketing in which advertisers pay a fee each time one of their ads is clicked.” It’s all about purchasing visits for your website rather than working on earning them organically.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Search engine optimisation is almost the complete opposite. In it, you pay for better placement and exposure of your business in Google’s search listings without paying a cent for clicks.

The SEO vs. PPC statistics for 2018 paint an interesting picture of the digital marketing landscape, but the data is largely generalised, so a deeper analysis of the differences between the two will help you determine which is more beneficial for your business.

Analysing PPC vs. SEO

Starting with SEO, it doesn’t involve just a mere optimisation of your website and content to rank them better on Google. Rather, it is also about smooth and accessible website design and experience, or UX (user experience).

If you consider the major search engines out there like Bing, Yahoo, Google etc, they pay a keen attention to how people are interacting with your website. Along with a myriad of other factors, if your visitors come back to your website and other sites link to your website pages then the search engines consider your site as a good candidate for a higher search ranking.

When it comes to PPC, you need to pay for accommodating an advertising space for your targeted keywords on the search engine result pages. Interestingly, you can’t accomplish a paid ad campaign successfully without implementing some significant SEO in it.

Now, let’s check out an example:

In this screenshot, you can see the results of paid ads and SEO are being highlighted in response to a particular keyword. If you consider Outdoor Cleaning Specialists, Repco and Sydney Pressure Cleaner, they seem to be in the position they are because they generate a huge amount of traffic each day through the help of their PPC advertisements.

For instance, let’s assume that Outdoor Cleaning Specialists typically generates 150 clicks to its website every day through PPC. Now, the sum would come to a total expenditure of $9,000 of paid ads every day (150 clicks x $ 60 cost per click) = $9,000.

On the other hand, when it comes to Bunnings Warehouse, it is ranking at the top of search engine organically. It means that this website doesn’t have to bare any cost for a user clicking on its organic placement. Hence, if we look at it purely through the lens of ROI, SEO seems to be far more effective than paying $9,000 per day through PPC to reach the maximum number of customers.

Shouldn’t I use PPC then?

Of course, there are some major advantages of PPC over SEO. If you are able enough to establish your paid campaign in its best possible form, an excellent return on your investment is assured.

Furthermore, you need to remember that search algorithms don’t revolve around which website is going to pay the highest in order to appear in the foremost ad slot. Rather, search engines prioritise is the best results based on the search queries of the users and not the companies paying for ads. Hence, in the case of PPC, you must still have a competent UX as well as SEO in place that targets optimal keywords – in addition to being the highest bidder on ad exposure.

A yet another excellent perk of choosing PPC is that you can easily advertise on other websites that generate a lot of traffic. Suppose, a user sees your ad while making searching a relevant keyword on Google and they continue to see it appear on blogs and sites they frequent. The repeated exposure will leave a lasting impression on that potential customer.

The Verdict

So, which is right for your business? PPC or SEO?

The answer is, it totally depends on your business objective and approach. You need to ask yourself the following questions before making a decision:

  • What is the size of your business advertising budget?

Before choosing between SEO and PPC, you need to first decide on the maximum size of the advertising budget that your business can afford. Obviously, you can set the limit to be as low as possible but spending an amount of approximately $ 5 to $10 daily is recommended.

If you have a strict budget for online ad spend then PPC may be the best option to start with. It can offer you multiple benefits like faster testing, safeguarding your website from constant SEO algorithm updates, heightened initial exposure and so on.

  • Are the Search Engine Result Pages (SERP) in your niche too competitive?

It is also pretty crucial for you to understand the rate of competitiveness that already exists on the SERPs that are related to your targeted keywords. To get an idea, you need to enter your selected keywords into an external keyword research tool. It will let you know the expected competition level; how many users are bidding on your keywords and the approximate cost-per-click (CPC).

If your business belongs to a very competitive industry, it won’t be possible for you to displace the authority websites without spending a significant amount of money and time. In this case, it would be smart to pay for the traffic in the form of PPC promotions.

However, if you think that you are operating in more of a niche market that doesn’t have too many high-profile competitors, opting for SEO will suffice.

  • How does the average CPCs in your industry look like?

PPC platforms often let users bid for the price that they are ready to pay for a single keyword click – this is the previously mentioned method of cost-per-click (CPC). For example, if you want to rank your business for the keywords ‘online car rental’ you can make use of the traffic estimator which comes with the free Google external keyword research tool. You might see that the average CPC for this phrase is as little as $2 AUD.

However, this number be much higher, even upwards of $30 AUD (for example, CPC for the phrase ‘car rental’). Paying that much for CPC will never see your business making a profit from PPC traffic. In this case, SEO would be the best choice here. So, you need to have a clear idea of the CPCs in your niche and decide accordingly.

Wrapping Up

As discussed earlier, the best results will be determined by your business’s goals and objectives. One should also consider strategically combining PCC and SEO where it makes sense for maximal results.

Understand your business from the core, take the right call, and achieve amazing results!

 

“The opinions expressed by BizWitty Contributors are their own, not those of BizCover and should not be relied upon in place of appropriate professional advice. Please read our full disclaimer."

About the author

Maulik Patel

Maulik Patel is Founder & Director of ClickMatix.com.au. His passion for helping people in all aspects of online marketing flows through in the expert industry coverage he provides. He is an expert in Web marketing, Search Engine Optimisation, Social Media, Affiliate Marketing, B2B Marketing, Online Advertisement of Google, Yahoo and MSN.