So you have started venturing your new business. You have finished setting up your website and social media platforms and even started posting to maximize your visibility and audience reach.
After several weeks, you have yet to see your efforts to bear its fruits. You still continue to struggle to improve your sales, conversion rates and customer acquisition. Fortunately, there are various digital marketing solutions such as “search engine optimization” and “pay-per-click” to scale your business.
Although both offer a great deal of advantages, most businesses are faced with the dilemma on which strategy to use.
Keep reading to learn more about the advantages and disadvantages of PPC and SEO to your business.
Understanding Search Engine Optimization
You may have probably heard a lot about search engine optimization when starting your business. Essentially, search engine optimization or SEO is a process of organically improving the website’s visibility with the aim of increasing its ranking on search engine results pages.
Utilizing SEO requires you to have a grasp on the algorithms and several Google ranking factors to effectively employ it. Moreover, you need to understand your target audience’s needs for your campaign to succeed.
SEO is an important strategy that many established businesses are focusing on today. Not only does it provide great results, but also keeps the marketing costs down to a minimum.
Advantages
Listed below are some of the advantages of SEO:
- Significantly improve your credibility
- It is a cost effective strategy to promote your services
- Maximizes your content marketing efforts
- Provides you a competitive advantage in the market
- Generate high-quality backlinks
Disadvantages
Here are some of the disadvantages of SEO that you should know:
- SEO needs time and effort to see results
- There are many websites trying to rank for the same keywords as yours
- Little to no return of investment at start
- Risk of losing rankings
- Positive result are not guaranteed
Understanding Pay-per-click
Contrary to SEO, Pay-per-click or PPC is a paid digital advertising model to get targeted visits for your website. In this strategy, businesses will need to pay for online platforms to publish an advertisement. Keep in mind that businesses will only pay for each visit that their website will generate.
There are different types of PPC advertising to get a business started. Among this includes paid search market, search engine advertising, display advertising and affiliate marketing.
PPC is an essential strategy for many marketers, up until this day, as it allows them to have measurable data. These data are valuable as it gives businesses an opportunity to make adjustments for their ad campaigns to make them more effective.
Advantages
- Get measurable and accurate data
- Provides significant increase of web traffic
- Generate positive ROI
- Audiences are specifically targeted
- Opportunity to appear on top of the high ranking websites in SERP
Disadvantages
- It can be very expensive
- Generated traffic does not guarantee sales
- Opportunity is not sustainable
- Ads requires constant optimization
- Successful ad campaign may take long
Should you use PPC or SEO?
Now that you know what the two marketing strategies are, let’s answer the question: “Which strategy should you choose?” Well, the answer actually varies depending on your goals for your business. Both are effective strategies, if used and employed correctly by businesses.
With a limited budget, SEO is a great solution if you want long-term growth and online authority. On the other hand, PPC is an excellent choice for businesses that aim for quick growth and increase their sales in a short amount of time.
Remember that whether you start with PPC or SEO, you will eventually need to use both to maximize your business potential. Right now, your business should focus on weighing the advantages and disadvantages of each strategy. Once you’ve determined which works best for you, it’s time to put everything you’ve learned to use.
Still not sure where to start? Our team is here to help you upscale your business.
To learn more about Talk Out Loud’s digital marketing services in Portland, you may visit our website or get in touch with us by booking an appointment here or calling (800) 773-0029.
