A business immersed in the world of digital advertising may know one question that is difficult to answer. That question is, ‘Do I go with PPC advertising or go with organic SEO?’ You might be wondering which one has more advantages over disadvantages and truthfully that is going to depend on your business and your business goals. There are a few topics to consider when trying to make this decision, but first what do each of these things mean? Pay per click advertising is exactly what it sounds like, a business pays per click on their Google ads. Which, at first glance may appear to be a bit pricy, but with further explanation it is not. Organic SEO searches are not bought, but are achieved through relevance by following SEO guidelines. Both are great ways to obtain leads for your business, but which is better?
Well let’s first look into the benefits because if the benefits of one vs the other is better for you, then that can make the decision easier. As mentioned before, PPC advertising at first glance may seem to be a bit pricy, but if the campaigns are well managed, the costs will seem more reasonable due to the outcome the campaigns can produce. The advantages of PPC advertising include, targeting specific demographics, immediate rankings and results, test search terms prior to optimizing, can select your daily budget, make instantaneous changes, levels playing field (meaning it doesn’t matter the size of your company),and increases local visibility.
Organic SEO also has its own advantages worth reading about. The first and foremost reason to try SEO would be that costs would only come into play if you were to hire an SEO agency. Another reason SEO could be better is because people tend to ignore the PPC ads and click on the actual search results. Less than 25% of consumers who search will click on a PPC ad over an organic search, thus giving organic searches more traffic for possible leads. Also, once a business has a highly ranked keyword it tends to find itself in a permanent position on rankings. This will hold true only if the business continues to watch their competition and keeps applying the most updated guidelines and techniques. So, now that you have seen some of the advantages for both PPC and Organic SEO there are a few things to consider in deciding which is best for your company.
The first thing to consider is how much your online marketing budget will support. Having a larger budget may lead you to PPC where you can set a daily budget. If your budget is more limited, your best option would be to work with the organic SEO methods. The next question your business should ask is what is the average cost per click in your industry? This question could also help in answering how much you are willing to spend. Some averages could be around $2 and the next industry could average at $28. It is a good idea to look into it because it could make your decision easier. The last question might be how competitive are the target keywords in your industry? High competitive rate may shift you towards running PPC campaigns and a lower competitive rate may allow your business to stay on top of the ranks.
There is one other thing that has not been discussed but, extremely important to realize. For some businesses the best option is to do both PPC and SEO at the same time for a few reasons. First, SEO takes roughly 6 months to fully optimize. So, the results are not immediate. Where, PPC has much more immediate results. Why not have a PPC campaign running and gaining leads for your company while your SEO campaign is fully optimizing? Once, your SEO campaign is fully optimized, then you can take the throttle off of PPC. We find taking this method produces the best results. If you are on the fence today about whether your company needs SEO, PPC, or both give us a call at (804) 228-4400 and we are happy to help!
