Search Engine Optimization (SEO) vs. Pay-Per-Click Services (PPC)
By Yol Swan-Dass
Now that your web site is up and running, it is time to consider which form of internet marketing would be best for you: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or Pay-Per-Click (PPC). No matter what your business is, or whether it’s big or small, the biggest factors for you to consider should be, first of all, money, followed by time and efficiency, as well as effort.
Let’s start with the most prominent factor: Money. I often hear people say that “SEO is so expensive!” Is this really true? Well, SEO often requires a considerable up front investment… but PPC is a long term, ongoing expense. An SEO professional makes changes intended to increase your site's natural rankings, which in turn translates into free traffic. That is, once you have invested in your SEO services, there is no more to pay, and potential customers find you through a natural search. Although you can control your site's rankings via PPC, you will always have to pay for them, which often ends up being many times more expensive than any SEO investment. Getting your site ranked in the first pages of the main search engines, especially Google, is priceless exposure, since the competition for any keyword on the internet is fierce nowadays. Of course, ranking on a PPC campaign is just as priceless when it comes to potential customers, but you must remember that you will always have to pay for it. There are no free clicks in a sponsored search, so this one boils down to a long term budget consideration.
Other big factors when deciding between SEO and PPC should be time and efficiency. In other words, you must determine how time-sensitive your objective is, as this may determine which way to go. Obviously, the quickest way to drive traffic is through PPC (Pay-Per-Click). You build your campaign, and you get traffic with the click of a button. Changes are immediate, and you can control this to a certain extent by switching between your keywords, trying different ads, and so on. You must remember that you are bidding for keywords, so if you have a lot of competition for your chosen keywords, your investment will certainly be bigger.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is quite the opposite, although well worth the effort. Due to the dynamic nature of the search engines, time projections are difficult to make. So, first of all, it is very important to be patient. Sometimes you make a few changes and see immediate results, and often times it takes months to see ANY results. You also need to keep in mind that optimizing your website is somewhat of an ongoing effort, due the fact that search engine tend to change their algorithms to make search results more relevant, and your site might need adjustments, an ongoing link campaign, and so on, to keep it up there with its competition. Yet the end result -- increasing your site's natural rankings and a high volume of free traffic-- is most certainly well worth the time and money spent.
So it seems that SEO takes more time and effort than creating and maintaining a Pay-Per-Click campaign. Not quite. It's important to see that a considerable effort is required with both. Optimizing a website is like climbing to the top of a mountain. You start up the mountain and work for hours at a time on optimization. Then you rest while the engine crawlers find your site and assess your improvements. And then you start up the mountain again until you reach your goal. The creation of a PPC campaign takes only a few steps, but even so to make it successful, consistent maintenance is required. Instead of investing hours of work at once with waiting time in between, PPC requires almost daily attention and maintenance. From the outside, it may look like a simple process, but in reality there are many small details that can make a huge difference in the success of a campaign. After all, the rivalry of internet marketing keeps getting more and more intense everyday...
It is true that both SEO and PPC have opened the doors to small business and fueled quickly growing enterprises. A company now can easily make a name for itself --and fast-- if it pays enough per keyword to appear in Google's top positions, or if it has an optimized website that ranks better than its competition. E-commerce has become an incredibly easy and cost-effective way to market and sell products. Just think about how big the internet has become, how many people surf it on a daily basis, the traffic that exists online, how you can now target that traffic either by city, state, region, or country, and how much more affordable it can be.
So, yes, like most everything in life, Search Engine Optimization and Pay-Per-Click they each have pros and cons. Yet you have to keep in mind that online marketing is not just a phase. The Internet is here to stay, and growing to be an integral part of your life and mine, and everyone else's. If you are still debating whether it's the right time to get serious about marketing online, consider that your competition is most likely already doing it. Whether you choose Search Engine optimization or Pay-Per-Click depends on your specifi situation, but it's certainly time to start considering which type of marketing campaign will best suit the needs of your business and get it going as soon as possible. And of course, if you can afford it, there is no better choice than combining Pay-Per-Click with organic Search Engine Optimization to cover all your bases.
One last thing worth mentioning is that a more creative type of SEO will not only bring your site to the top ranks in Google and the other search engines, it will also draw potential customers in. In other words, what is the purpose of optimizing or paying tons of money for PPC to rank in the top of a search if your visitors simply click back to the search results once they land on your home page?
Creative Search Engine Optimization takes into account both the search engines and your visitors. And this is something not easy to find. Nowadays surfers have become more sophisticated, more educated, better informed about the internet and what is out there. They know they have many choices and can easily shop around for what they're looking for. Is your SEO or PPC campaing creative enough to keep them coming back?
© 2007 Yol Swan-Dass. All rights reserved.
