SEO vs. PPC: Which Should You Focus on First?
Here is a case scenario. You're just beginning your marketing campaign and hoping for success. Not just that, you want your dollars to get the most bang. You want to make sure that the time and money you put in will carry to deliver a large volume of high-quality traffic. You want a solid rock ROI, in other words.
Although you can take a multitude of different paths, it often boils down to one of two choices: SEO or PPC. Both are tried and true and will connect to your page in a targeted manner. But which option makes your campaign the most sense? More significantly, the first thing you can reflect on?
In this article, I draw on my personal experience to illustrate the pros and cons of each choice. Eventually, you should know for sure which direction to follow.
By the Numbers
By now, I'm sure you know that in general, I'm a huge fan of statistics and data.
I find that when I take the passion out of it and just look at the numbers, I tend to make better choices.
So, let's look at some of WebpageFX's recent statistics on both SEO and PPC.
2017 SEO Stats
- Search engines launch 93 percent of online experiences
- 70% of the search results clicked were natural
- Compared to 14.6% of all SEOs (as opposed to 1.7% of outbound leads)
- Google scans more than a trillion times a year
- 89% of marketers say that SEO is effective
2017 PPC Stats
- PPC visitors are 50% more likely to buy compared to organic visitors
- 65% of all high-profile searches result in a tap of the ad
- Search ads raise the visibility of the brand by as much as 80%
- 32% of Companies sell goods directly to consumers using PPC
- Companies earn on average $3 per $1.60 spent on AdWords
These two approaches have topped up some impressive numbers.
You will get eligible leads if you plan and execute your project correctly, and a fair percentage of those leads will be converted.
And while the result is basically the same, depending on the direction you take, the way you get there is completely different.
Now let's go over the pros and cons.
The advantages of SEO
Maybe its cost-effectiveness is the biggest reason marketers prefer SEO over PPC. The bottom line is that you're going to pay much more for your PPC traffic than you're going to pay for SEO traffic, particularly if you're doing it at home.
Just look at what the median CPC for some of the top sectors is like:
With a whopping $5.88 CPC, the legal industry is hands down the worst. It takes a large investment to get up and running a PPC campaign. And if you're new to the game, you've got to deal with the inevitable learning curve, which means getting your CPA and ROI to where you want them to be will take some time.
SEO is much cheaper, requiring more than a small investment in time. SEO may be the only choice if your marketing budget is limited.
Another advantage is that advertisers prefer to get long-term results. Remember that initially SEO starts gradually, but it grows tremendously over time. This makes SEO much more efficient than PPC, which could lead to high-quality, organic traffic for years to come. Eventually, with SEO, you'll probably have a higher ROI.
Just think of it.
Every click that you get through PPC comes at a price. Just charging for it is the way you can drive traffic to your page. It essentially reduces the ROI. But it's a pretty straight gain to SEO. The returns are naturally lower if you procure the traffic organically. You will still drive traffic to your page even if you "take your foot off the gas." In fact, it means free traffic.
The advantages of PPC
Hands down, the biggest advantage is the traffic that you often get, you get immediately:
You can get eligible, ready to buy leads right off the bat. Better still, with purchasing goals in mind, you can specifically target keywords. For new businesses with little or no brand equity, it makes it perfect.
PPC helps drive traffic and improve the popularity of your product in a rush. PPC is your best option if you want almost instant results and don't have the luxury of waiting.
The conversion rate is another bonus. While you may end up spending more overall, 1.5x more likely to convert paid search results. And this makes sense, given that advertisers can tailor and refine their advertisements and specifically target keywords of high-intent.
I do assume that there are far more prospects for PPCs today than in previous years. Although Google AdWords has had and continues to have the lion's share of business (nearly 80 percent of businesses are relying on Google for PPC), a menu of other options is now open. Bing advertisements, for example, are beginning to catch on, and social networks like Facebook and Twitter are providing paid advertising. The bottom line is you're not stuck with AdWords.
The downside of SEO
To be realistic, all the time there are not just puppy dogs and rainbows. The fluctuation of the search engine algorithms is one of the key problems advertisers have with SEO.
In reality, "40 percent of marketers believe algorithm changes are SEO's biggest challenges."
Over the years, significant updates like Panda and Penguin have caused severe disruption to SERPs, and many marketers have felt the negative impact. So pointing out that SEO is not a set-it-and-forget-it strategy is significant. This requires a lot of maintenance and you need to keep up-to-date with current trends.
Penalties
Only thinking of an ugly penalty is enough to squirm a lot of SEO marketers. Only recently, with Google's "Fred" update, many pages have seen their traffic drop by as much as 90 percent.
Not to freak you out, but even if you have the best intentions and would never dream of participating in any black-hat SEO tactics, penalties could happen. The best way to keep the site safe is to always practice moral, white-hat tactics and focus on creating the best content possible instead of trying to capitalize on SEO's next big thing.
I also recommend that you stay up-to-date on SEO trends, particularly major updates of algorithms.
It takes time to see results
You can find the SEO cycle very stressful if persistence is not your ability. It's just not a plan that will bring significant change overnight. I don't know how much you're experienced and how many awesome backlinks you can make, you can't expect instant miracles.
It may take a considerable amount of time to get Google to index your content. It's hard to determine exactly how long it takes, but I've learned it might take Google to index new content for up to four weeks. And it can take months before any real impact is noticeable, so for the long haul, you have to be in it to succeed with SEO.
Reaching page one is no guarantee
What is SEO marketers ' primary goal? Get your content for the selected keyword phrase on page one. This is the game's name. But clearly this is more complicated than it seems, without any guarantees.
Even if you do all right, the number of factors that decide how the content ends up in the SERPs is almost infinite. And it's very disheartening to fail to reach page one because it's almost invisible. In view of "75% of users never scroll past the first page," if your content misses the mark, you won't be raking in traffic. If you want to see quickly how to rank for various keywords, this is how to search.
The downside of PPC
I mentioned earlier that PPC comes with much higher upfront costs. And that's the biggest problems advertisers generally have. Just look at some of today's most expensive keywords:
"Insurance" is $54.91. That is insane. And the scary thing is the increasing cost of PPCs. Many websites eventually increase their prices as more and more advertisers fight for traffic.
In addition, Google AdWords can be cutthroat. In some situations, the money you spend on traffic is going to outweigh what you earn from sales. If you're a new company with a budget for shoestring, from a cost perspective, PPC may simply not be in the cards.
Optimizing your ads can be difficult and time-consuming
It's not like you just slap up some ads on a PPC network and get a high targeted traffic volume instantly. It takes time to learn the fundamentals.
It takes even longer to completely configure your ads to decrease your CPC and increase your CTR. Even for seasoned marketers, it is quite an arduous process.
This means that you may end up spending more than you should before you get the hang of things.
Your traffic ceases when your campaign ends
This is the real downer. The second thing you're stopping to funnel money into your PPC campaign is taking zero traffic. This means, of course, that you also get zero revenue from PPC, which is certainly food for thought.
While other marketing tactics— such as SEO, social media, content marketing, etc.— require maintenance and improvement, even if you take a break, they should still drive traffic to your page. This is not the case for PPC, sadly.
You have to constantly "stroke the gas" to keep your traffic and leads, putting money into your campaign.
Examining all the angles
At this point, I addressed both SEO and PPC's positive, bad and ugly aspects. Like any other advertising region, each one has its pros and cons. Look at all the options to find out which solution best suits your short-term and long-term needs before you commit to either.
When you should focus on SEO first
PPC may not be feasible when you work with a small budget, so SEO is the obvious choice. It's about investing time in your marketing campaign rather than cash in this case. It is by no means an easy route, but in the long run you should see a favorable ROI, and it might look like this:
You’re looking for long-term sustainability
Here's how I look at SEO. It's like trying to lift a massive boulder. There is a lot of initial effort involved, but it tends to gain traction when it is in motion. It is a force to be reckoned with after a while.
To me, the effort is worth it.
When your project expands and your content management database increases, so will your traffic, leads, and sales. Staying in the SEO course has allowed me to take tremendous traffic to highly desired keywords such as "content marketing." Strong SEO practices have helped me outrank even Wikipedia for this term:
You don’t need instant results
As I mentioned earlier, the long-term vision is all about SEO. Legitimate results can take time, particularly if you're a new brand. But if you don't want massive results right away and you're more interested in the long game, it makes sense to SEO absolutely.
Here's what you can expect from a project for SEO:
The outcomes of the first month are likely to be pretty puny. But usually things begin to heat up around the six-month mark. That might be the tipping point. SEO is usually your best bet if you're in a position to wait a little until big leads pour in.
When you should focus on PPC first
As I see it, there must be two factors in place for a PPC-first program. You should A) have a large budget and B) aim for quick results in lightning. When you start your campaign, choose your keywords, pick your budget, and set up your advertising, you are likely to get a significant traffic stream.
This can occur sometimes in as quickly as 24 hours. Like that, with minimal heavy lifting on your part, your product is introduced to your target audience. You should see a good ROI for PPC as long as you follow best practices.
While it will probably cost you more than it would with SEO, the payoff is much easier and you can save a lot of time and energy for yourself. If you choose to follow the PPC route, I should point out that you are not stuck with Google AdWords at all.
Don't get me wrong, AdWords is still possible and will certainly be able to produce results. But these days I'm seeing more and more advertisers opting for Bing Ads because it's cheaper than AdWords and can help marketers reach a different audience.
And as you can see with this fast "camping tents" search, your ads on Bing have plenty of prime real estate. Facebook now also has a massive advertising platform, and you're virtually guaranteed to hit your market of two billion monthly users.
Conclusion
Two tactics that usually receive first attention are SEO and PPC when a company first begins its marketing campaign. Both can achieve results, but in two very different ways they do this.
SEO is about planting a seed and waiting for it to bear fruit. It takes a while, but once you obtain favorable rankings in the SERPs, the product can be well placed.
The best part is that many brands experience exponential growth once they overcome SEO challenges.
PPC is all about an instant payoff, on the other hand. It requires a bigger investment in advance, but the results are nearly immediate. You could basically go from being a zero-sales no-name brand to smashing it overnight with PPC.
The only problem is that it will cost you, and SEO's sustainability is lacking. I wish I could tell you 100 percent of the time which strategy is best for each single brand. But this is only black and white material.
Choosing what strategies to concentrate on first depends on multiple variables and clear advertising objectives that you have. Nonetheless, looking at the pros and cons will give you a good idea of what is best for your company, by looking at all the angles.
