What’s right for you: PPC or SEO?

With the great use of search engines, online marketing is grabbing many organizations’ attention. This is due to the fact that people use search engines to find websites and people are coming to websites via a search engine instead of them going directly.

Businesses small and large want better visibility online, this is why it is important for all companies to have a strong presence on search engines.

With visibility on search engines there are two main options to choose from. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) where you have high rankings in organic results or Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ads that appear as sponsored listings on Google search.

PPC Advertising

PPC is a good strategy to use if you want your business to get hold of traffic as soon as possible. A clear example of what PPC does is; Search engines such as Google, Bing or Yahoo gives businesses or individuals an opportunity to buy listings in their search results. These listings are placed above the organic search results.

With PPC, your business will then pay every time a user clicks on the sponsored listing. This strategy involves being charged over a certain amount and to avoid any big payment being spent over poor management, be sure to remain organized and keep an eye out on your PPC account.

PPC provides visits to their site rapidly, in which the individuals/businesses pay for each time their ad is clicked, rather than attempting to naturally gain those visits.

SEO

SEO is a marketing approach that focuses on the growth of visibility in non-paid engine results. SEO provides both technical and creative materials needed to improve rankings, drive traffic and increase awareness by internet users.

SEO not only focuses on building search engine friendly websites but to help the site better for people to enjoy viewing. SEO will ensure that your website is noticeable for other searchers to be able to easily discover and find.

SEO and PPC combined give companies and businesses the possibility to maximum their visibility on search engine results pages. PPC can be better for small and upcoming businesses or even large business, as this allows their business to become well known and visited for it to increase and meet its needs.

As stated before above, any sign of poor PPC management can lead to a poor return on investment. Where as the SEO strategy has lower risk and is “on going” because it’s done naturally, without any payment being made. But, some businesses become inpatient and start using “black hat” SEO techniques to rank quickly – this is not the best approach as Google will issue a penalty and a penalty can result in zero visibility for months!