Are you caught up in the never-ending SEO vs. PPC debate? You're not the only one who feels this way. CMOs of multinational businesses are continuously grappling with how to achieve the best possible synergy between their SEO and PPC strategies in order to maximise marketing ROI.
Your company already employs search engine optimization (SEO) and invests heavily in pay-per-click advertising (PPC). You like what SEO does for your business since it allows you to take advantage of organic search at a low cost. PPC, on the other hand, appeals to you because it generates results as soon as you place ads.
You already know that both marketing methods get results. But do you know how much money you'll make from each vehicle? Are you aware of how to mix them to increase revenue for your company?
Let's go over the advantages and disadvantages of organic SEO vs. PPC so you can find the appropriate balance to maximise your digital marketing impact.
Points to Remember
- When comparing the benefits and drawbacks of SEO vs. PPC, keep in mind that both marketing vehicles can help your company grow.
- SEO is highly profitable and generates long-term, sustainable results when done correctly. It's crucial to remember, though, that results take time to appear.
- PPC yields immediate results. PPC, on the other hand, is costly and raises your cost per acquisition.
- Both SEO and PPC are important components of your marketing mix, yet they support various business goals.
Search engine optimization advantages and disadvantages
The techniques and tactics that make your website as search engine friendly as possible are referred to as SEO. A well-executed SEO strategy can help your website rank better in organic search results for a set of carefully selected queries.
When a user types a word into Google, it is Google's goal to return the most useful, relevant, and trustworthy results. It's your responsibility as an SEO strategist to make sure your content ranks in Google's top ten results for those terms. Finally, you want your target clients to come to your website and say, "This is exactly what I needed!"
The following are some examples of SEO activities:
- Keyword research
- Analyze the competition
- SEO in a technical sense
- Optimization of the landing page (content SEO)
- Audits of content
- The creation of content
- Off-Page SEO
When done correctly, SEO allows searchers to see your brand at every point of the client journey. As a result, consumers and businesses will regard you as a reliable and familiar resource.
SEO Advantages
SEO is quite profitable.
When it comes to organic vs. paid search results, how do things stack up? SEO is set to become one of the most profitable vehicles in your marketing mix, dollar for dollar. It's significantly more profitable in the long run than PPC.
According to a research conducted by Forrester Consulting, SEO boosts a critical business metric: customer lifetime value (CAC). Marketers and executives said that traffic derived through SEO was more engaged and loyal to the business than traffic derived from paid channels.
SEO is quite scalable.
SEO scalable cost-effectively to give compounded results, whether you have a website with hundreds or thousands of pages. For example, appropriately optimised URL architecture will help both existing and future web pages without requiring additional effort.
SEO is "always on" in terms of cost.
The most significant distinction between SEO and PPC marketing is that organic search rankings work for your company 24 hours a day, seven days a week. There's no need to spend money on advertising or set up dayparting. Your brand will be constantly promoted by your organic search engine rankings.
SEO yields long-term results.
When your SEO efforts result in high visibility in organic search results, your brand benefits not only now, but also in the future. Positive organic search exposure raises the ROI from your SEO initiatives tremendously over months and years.
SEO is synonymous with positive branding.
People will consider you a major participant in the industry if you dominate Google search. In fact, in the perspective of your audience, the simple appearance of your listings on the first page of Google is an indication of trust.
SEO takes up more real estate in the SERPs.
One page can possibly occupy many slots in the Google SERP if your content is appropriately optimised. If you rank for the featured snippet, for example, your website will receive two slots. You could perhaps have a third seat on page one if you optimise for the People Also Ask section (PAA).
SEO allows customers to interact with you at various stages of the funnel.
Want to have an impact on consumer touchpoints at the start of their journey? Then optimise for long-tail keywords and research-related themes. If you additionally optimise for middle-of-funnel (MoFu) terms, your brand will show up when your target audience's alternatives are narrowed. Finally, SEO towards the bottom of the funnel allows you to influence the buyer's final decision (think ROI calculators).
Here's how you create a stronger conversion funnel.
SEO brings your brand's originality to the forefront.
You can truly delve into your team's ingenuity to obtain an edge over the competition with organic search results. Each of the following content ideas can help you gain more organic search results for your brand:
- Compose lengthy blog posts
- Custom research reports can be published.
- Create infographics
- SlideShares should be uploaded.
- create a new video series
Furthermore, organic search results distinguish your brand and highlight its value and personality.
Do you want more video advice? Check out our video SEO guide!
SEO's return on investment (ROI) grows with time.
Let's say you have a hundred dollars. Now, for the next month, increase it by 20% every day. You only have $207. after five days. You only have $516 after ten days. What do you anticipate your balance will be at the end of the month? Surprisingly, the total would be $23,738, a rise of more than 23,600 percent.
In the same way, SEO's return on investment (ROI) grows with time. All of your material will benefit as your credibility and authority grow. As a result, with less work, your new pages, posts, and other material will rank higher.
SEO's drawbacks
SEO methods take time to implement.
There isn't any way around it. Good SEO necessitates effort, and results take time to manifest. The crux of the SEO vs. PPC debate is this:
- PPC returns are immediate, but if you don't pay the piper, they vanish.
- SEO takes time, but you'll see a return on your investment long after you've made it. In fact, those outcomes might occasionally last for years.
How long do you think it will take to see results? This is dependent on a variety of things, including the strength of your domain and your SEO strategy. However, you should expect to notice SEO results after at least six months.
However, once you've completed the steps below, you'll be able to...
- Make your website more user-friendly.
- Choose the correct topics and keywords to focus on.
- Create interesting content to share.
- Earn reputable, relevant backlinks with content marketing campaigns
...then future attempts should provide faster results, maybe within weeks or even days.
Changes to Google's Algorithm
You may need to tweak components of your SEO programme from time to time when the algorithm changes. Instead of setting it and forgetting it, you should track performance over time and make adjustments as needed.
PPC Advantages and Disadvantages
Pay-per-click advertising, or PPC advertising utilising Google Adwords or Bing Adverts, is the practise of paying to be at the top (or bottom) of the SERPs, in the real estate dedicated to ads, where SEO is the process of naturally ranking in the search results.
You may have complete control over the messaging and links on the search results page using PPC. Because paid search marketing is an auction, there's no guarantee when your ads will show, but you have more control over your campaign than you have with SEO.
Keyword and subject research, as well as competitor analysis, are all part of PPC efforts. Account architecture, campaign management, and bid management are also included. Don't forget about ad copy, landing page development, testing, and other aspects of your campaign.
Because PPC is so data-driven, it's critical for a PPC expert to keep a close eye on results, continually fine-tuning keyword, ad group, and messaging strategies in order to improve conversion rates and cut average cost per click (CPC).
The Benefits of Pay-Per-Click
Results that are almost instantaneous
It takes time to conduct preliminary research and create a fresh campaign or ad group. However, once you start using PPC, you'll notice that the results are quick and easy to understand.
There are logical reasons to examine the short-term results of paid search vs organic, regardless of how things play out in the long run. You could be promoting a new product, getting ready for the holidays, or running a sale or campaign. It's possible that you just wish to take up more space in the Google SERPs. Or maybe you just need some immediate exposure while you wait for your long-term SEO efforts to pay off.
Easy-to-understand information
You'll feel right at home with PPC if your brand is heavily data-driven. You'll be able to receive a clean, unambiguous image of your PPC campaign's ROI due to the immediacy of the results and the specificity of the campaign you're running.
PPC data is not only more straightforward by nature, but Google also makes its PPC data more transparent than its SEO data. Google tends to provide useful information to its paying customers, which they may utilise to plan a successful campaign.
Audience segmentation
Do you want to target certain email addresses or audiences that are comparable to yours? Perhaps you'd like to retarget users who conduct specific searches? Maybe you'd like to target URLs for websites, apps, or YouTube videos that are relevant to your audience's interests. If you use PPC, you can accomplish all of this.
PPC is your ticket if you want to conduct campaigns with focused messaging in certain geographic locations. You have the option of displaying specific adverts in one spot while simultaneously displaying other ads in another. Do you want to run 50 distinct campaigns in 50 different cities? That's not an issue with PPC.
PPC's drawbacks
There will be no outcomes if there is no money.
These are sponsored advertisements, so while you may be able to pull a lever and see results, your traffic will vanish as soon as you stop pulling that lever. That means that if you need to cut your spending or stop paying completely, your firm will experience the instant implications of losing converting traffic.
SEO, on the other hand, is more like a giant boulder rolling down a downward slope: it takes a lot of power to get it moving, but once it does, it keeps rolling long after you stop pushing.
It's a significant financial commitment.
PPC advertising necessitates a substantial advertising budget. No money to spend? There are no advertisements and no results. Furthermore, CPCs have been growing for years, implying that merely generating a click (regardless of qualification or whether they ever become a lead or make a purchase) now necessitates a bigger expenditure than in the past.
Furthermore, PPC is a continuous fine-tuning process in which your professionals try various bids, ad copy, keywords, landing pages, and campaign settings until they find the sweet spot. That implies you can't anticipate a 100% return on investment, and you'll almost certainly lose money on failed experiments. That's all part of the process, but it's also one of the reasons PPC takes more money than you might think.
Customer acquisition costs are higher.
Customer acquisition initiatives using PPC have a hefty price tag. Many large companies spend six or seven figures each month on PPC, resulting in rather expensive acquisition expenses.
"Banner blindness" is difficult to avoid.
Banner blindness is a condition in which people fail to notice ads. Many internet searchers have grown accustomed to seeing adverts clutter pages with unwelcome messages, and have developed the practise of immediately dismissing them in favour of more valuable information on the page.
Eye-tracking tests show that most users skip past the paid results at the top of the SERPs and move right to the organic results. It can be frustrating to prioritise PPC in your online marketing strategy only to discover that the majority of your target audience ignores ads.
A comparison of SEO and PPC
Statistics on organic vs. sponsored search
There's plenty of data to compare different search channels because the issue has raged on for years. Let's take a look at some SEO vs. PPC statistics. across all industries had a CTR of 3.17 percent
- Organic listings accounted for 64 percent of all clicks in the SERPs, according to Conductor. Paid ads, on the other hand, accounted for only 6% of clicks according to the Conductor study. (The rest were non-clicks, or the searcher moved on to an other phrase, or something similar.)
- According to HubSpot, up to 80% of users disregard PPC ads.
- The average CTR for PPC advertising across all industries is 3.17 percent, according to WordStream.
- In April 2019, Advanced Web Ranking discovered that the Google page one organic CTR was 77.2 percent for 2,547,868 keywords across 47,781 websites. The organic CTR for mobile was 64.97 percent.
- Organic desktop listings still generate 20X more hits than PPC advertisements, according to a 2018 study by Jumpshot and Moz, while organic mobile listings generate 10X more clicks than PPC ads.
What conclusions may we draw from this information?
Click-through rates for SEO vs. PPC
For starters, the gap between organic and paid search engine marketing in terms of click-through rate is significant. Organic search provided a considerably greater CTR than sponsored search ads, regardless of the study mentioned above, the period of the study, or whether the study findings were for desktop or mobile.
If you want to increase search traffic to your website, SEO appears to be the better option.
ROI of SEO vs. PPC
We've observed that SEO has greater click-through rates than PPC, implying that it has the ability to generate substantially more organic traffic your way. Furthermore, when compared to PPC, your cost per acquisition (CPA) will be substantially lower with SEO.
If you're currently spending six or seven figures per month on sponsored search, learning how to enhance SEO results will help you save money. Consider this: if you spend a million dollars per month on paid search, it's likely that you could cut your CPA by 60%, 70%, or even more than 80% by dominating organic search while reducing your PPC expenditure.
If your SEO skills aren't up to par right now, you can still plan on gradually increasing your SEO dependency. As your organic performance improves, it will be more advantageous for you to focus more on SEO and rely less and less on paid search. This method takes time, but it is more beneficial for you than simply latching on to massive paid search allocations because PPC is a known quantity or "that's what you've always done."
To get the most out of your SEO efforts, you'll want to use Enterprise SEO throughout the funnel, from collecting people who are interested in a product or service category but are still researching it to those who are ready to make a purchase decision right now.
Which is better for my brand: SEO or PPC?
You've made it this far and are eager to learn who the clear winner is. "Why not develop an SEO and PPC synergy?" is the greatest response for many organisations.
Integration of SEO with PPC allows you to take up more space on Google's SERP. In this way, PPC and SEO work together to reduce competition and strengthen a brand's image. As a result, by combining the two tactics, you may maximise your marketing ROI.
For long-term traffic, conversions, and ROI, SEO is definitely the better alternative, and because of its compounding impact, the better you get at SEO, the more benefits you'll see. Web pages, blog posts, videos, podcasts, infographics, presentations, reports, and other sorts of content marketing are all covered by organic search. This allows your team to be more creative and successfully demonstrate your brand's difference and personality than PPC.
That isn't to suggest that PPC doesn't have its place. In the case of a short-term promotion or if you require immediate results for a certain location, for example, paid search is the better alternative.
So don't think you have to pick between SEO and PPC. Instead, learn about their advantages and disadvantages and use the best blend for your marketing objectives. You'll get a short-term as well as a long-term ROI if you accomplish this.