Loading ...Internet marketers are constantly pushing the battle between pay-per-click advertising and its closest enemy, search engine optimisation. The different information available, which skews toward one side or the other depending on who you’re talking to, can be very confusing for the average website owner. When so much rides on the right choice, how do you know what to choose?
The basic problem is this: most search engine optimisation experts will recommend that their clients focus on SEO, while most search marketers will steer their clients toward PPC. It’s understandable that each camp should act in this way, but it doesn’t help site owners make the initial decision.
Some interesting statistics
Pay-per-click is often touted as the more profitable path, in terms of conversions, and several studies have shown it to be so. PPC is known to get 1.2 times more conversions than SEO, but this fails to take into account the hidden extras you get when you concentrate on organic SEO. While more conversions may come through with PPC, SEO tends to cost significantly less and results in over seven times more traffic than PPC. This means that while your investment in PPC is likely to result in instant conversions, a smaller investment in SEO is likely to result in more conversions over a long period of time. As most SEO experts point out, PPC is often good for short-term boosts, but not so good in the long term.
Although pay-per-click appears to be a fairly straightforward ‘money for conversions’ transaction, it does produce some other results. PPC is a good testing ground for the effectiveness of keywords, and great for testing the responses of your target market. Both of these can be used in your SEO, and you can talk to our experts at SEO Consult Australia about this.
The hard truth
Search marketers are going to argue about the uses of PPC and SEO forever. Their points of view come not only from their professional preference, but from their loyalties and business motives. SEO professionals come from a similar point of view, but with the difference that a PPC campaign is often used as a tactic to enhance an SEO campaign.
A broad range of studies have been released on the effectiveness of pay-per-click campaigns in comparison to search engine optimization. The conclusion over all isn’t that one is more effective than the other, but that they can both help each other. Internet users, like most types of customers, become more susceptible to consuming a product, namely your website, with the more exposure they have to it. If an internet user sees your page advertised in the PPC columns as well as the SERPs, they are more likely to click on one or the other. There is also evidence that Google supports paying advertisers in the SERPs.
The decision to invest in some PPC will depend on your aims and your resources. When it comes to the question of PPC and SEO, though, it really shouldn’t be a choice between them, but a conglomeration of the two.
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Tags: Keywords, Search Engine Optimisation, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, SEO campaign, SEO Consult
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