Pay Per Click vs Search Engine Optimisation
The Debate
“Should I be doing SEO or PPC? Or should I be doing both?”
The Contenders
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) a.k.a. Search Engine Advertising (SEA): paying the search engines for exposure on their search results pages. PPC listings usually appear along the top and down the right hand side of the results screen. You decide where to appear in the results, but the higher the position the higher the price.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO): often wrongly thought of as avoiding paying search engines for exposure on their results pages. These listings (often called “natural” or “organic” listings) appear in the larger left hand area of the results page. Natural listing position is determined by the search engine on the basis of the site’s perceived relevancy.
The Weigh-In
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
- Drives (slightly) more traffic on any one phrase – the split in “click share” between natural and paid listings is about 60/40 (source: ClickZ), meaning of 100 searches carried out, natural listings will capture 60 clicks with paid listings taking the other 40
- The clicks are free – unlike PPC, you are not charged when someone clicks on your natural listing. However, the investment required to get yourself in position to attract these clicks can be considerable.
Pay Per Click (PPC)
- Starts driving traffic instantly – we can start driving PPC visitors to your site within minutes of your campaign launch; with SEO, it can take months (and often many, many months) before any serious traffic starts arriving on your site
- Has a far lower entry cost – with PPC, you only start paying when people start clicking on your ads (as little as 1p a click). With SEO, you could easily pay thousands of pounds before your site is anywhere near the first page of search results.
- Appear for an unlimited number of keywords -gaining visible positioning for all phrases relevant to your business with SEO is a practically impossible task. With PPC, you can bid on an unlimited number of keywords and appear in highly visible listing positions for them all.
- It’s 100% controllable – want to increase business during quiet periods? PPC can do that. Want to calm things down when things overwhelm you? No problem. Want to change strategy or take advantage of a recent news article or PR activity? It’s done. Unlike SEO, PPC advertising gives you full control over where and when your adverts appear.
- It’s 100% measurable – Whilst both PPC and SEO allow you to measure the rate at which visitors convert into customers on your site, working out the actual cost of attaining a new customer through SEO is near impossible. With PPC, you know exactly how much each customer has cost to attain, and have a range of tools available to lower this cost per customer figure to meet your financial goals.
- It can provide quick and quality market research – want to figure out whether your new website or product will be popular with customers? Rather than paying for months of SEO work to get your new site or product seen, you can run a pay per click campaign (using a set budget) and get instant and affordable market feedback that will drive your online marketing activities in the right direction. Further testing cycles with PPC are also very rapid.
The Outcome
If you can, you should always do both PPC and SEO. Choosing to do one but not the other is rather like paying for a Yellow Pages ad that will appear only in every second copy printed. You’re limiting your visibility, and that will limit potential customers. Appearing in both the “natural” and “paid” listings will ensure you attract the highest possible number of potential customers onto your site.
However, if you can only afford to do one, we would recommend you go with PPC. Campaigns are quick and affordable to implement, are fully controllable in terms of expenditure and return, and can provide continuous and cost-effective revenue stream for your business with minimal risk.
The Next Step?
Contact us to learn more about what search engine advertising can do for your business. Or, if you’re not yet convinced, visit our Reasons To Do SEA.
