SEO and PPC are both valuable strategic ways to reach your potential customers online. But which is better for your business? Discover the pros and cons of each and see how an SEO agency can help your Berkshire business with these two techniques.
What is SEO?
Search engine optimisation (SEO) is the practice of making your website attractive to search engines. It helps your website appear higher up on the search engine results pages (SERPs), generating more traffic to you.
Implementing SEO is a gradual process involving small, trackable changes whose success can be measured, then acted on, then the results analysed again and so on.
Effective SEO has many components. First, you need to make sure your site is as technically and structurally easy to crawl for search engines as possible. The information on your site also needs to be relevant to what people are searching for, and finally, generating external links to your content will improve how much search engines trust your website.
There is a cost-benefit to SEO, in that while expert knowledge and some initial investment of time and money is necessary to get your strategy off the ground, implementing the changes involves no direct charge. SEO also encourages good practice on your website, which not only boosts organic search rankings, but also results in a better user experience.
Once you have established your business in the organic search results, your competitors can’t simply buy their way in, offering you a strategic advantage if they are relying on paid search alone. Finally, a high ranking in the organic search results generates significantly more click-throughs than a highly-placed paid ad.
What is PPC?
Pay-per-click marketing (PPC) is a model whereby you bid for your ads to appear on SERPs and pay a fee every time your ad is clicked. This means your money is only spent on attracting customers who are likely to be interested in your business, and whose click is more likely to result in a conversion.
Search engines select which ads feature on SERPs based on a few factors. Google, for example, assigns a Quality Score to an ad and multiplies that score by the maximum amount the business has specified it is willing to pay. The ads which have the highest result get displayed, so be wary of getting sucked into bidding wars!
PPC results in much faster results than SEO. You can create a campaign in a day and ramp it up within a week. You also have significantly more control over PPC than SEO, in terms of how much capital you invest and who sees your ads. Finally, PPC gives you access to valuable marketing intelligence like A/B testing and keyword analytics, whose results can be applied across your marketing strategy.
Which is best for my business?
SEO and PPC both have their clear benefits. SEO generates long-term results that will boost your organic search results and build credibility and trust around your business’s web presence. Conversely, PPC offers an immediate boost with ads placed front and centre in front of customers who are likely to click them.
To maximise visibility and clicks, you will ideally want listings in the paid and organic results. Therefore, the two work best when they are run parallel to each other, invested in equally and strategically aligned with your overall marketing plan.
Jennifer Cornish: SEO agency, Berkshire
At Jennifer Cornish, we can help you maximise the results of your digital marketing. As an experienced SEO company based in Berkshire, we offer comprehensive SEO and PPC plans designed to achieve the goals that matter to you. Get in touch with us to arrange your free SEO audit, and find out how we can work together to boost your online presence.
