If you own a business, you should be doing Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Pay-Per-Click advertising (PPC), or both to reach as many people as possible with your products and/or services. When deciding which way to go, you should consider the pros and cons of each strategy. It’s also not an either-or situation.
What is the difference between SEO and PPC?
Digital marketers tend to throw around these initialisms, forgetting that people outside the industry may not know what they mean and how important they are for businesses looking to direct traffic to their websites. However, the difference between SEO and PPC is easy to understand.
A very basic explanation is that SEO ranks you hire in organic search, which is a fancy way of saying people can find you and you didn’t pay a search engine for those rankings. On the other hand, PPC requires you to pay to be above those organic search results.
Is SEO better than PPC?
Whether SEO is better than PPC depends on what you are trying to do. If you’re new to the world of SEO and PPC, you’re going to want to try a little bit of both if you have an advertising budget. Keep in mind, PPC will give you more immediate results than SEO because you’re essentially paying to get to the front of the line. With SEO, you’re playing the long game. It may take a while to see results from SEO, but the results will last longer because, unlike PPC, you don’t have to worry about your advertising budget running out. You do still have to worry about search engine algorithm updates, but it is unlikely an algorithm update will completely destroy your SEO gains if you are playing by the rules.
Regardless of which one you choose to use, SEO and PPC should be done by a professional who can assess your needs and knows how to develop a successful digital marketing strategy.
