How SEO and PPC are different

Consider search engines as an answering machine that scours billions of strings of data to respond to every query made by the searcher. These answers are displayed on the search engine results pages and can be divided into two segments – organic results and paid results. The practice involved to appear in organic results and paid results are SEO and PPC respectively, which comes under the umbrella of digital marketing.

When you’re getting started with digital marketing, there’s always a question looming around SEO and PPC and which is better. The unanimity around the digital block is that SEO is free and time taking, while PPC drives quick results and is costly.

So in this blog, we’ll discuss what SEO and PPC are and what are their benefits and how are they different from each other.

What is SEO?

Search engine optimization or SEO is the practice of optimizing a website to rank higher on the search engine results pages (SERPs) on the non-paid or organic results segment.

Organic search results cover most acres on the SERPs and appear more credible to the users. In fact, they also get 20 times more traffic than paid ads. Setting a solid SEO strategy in place can continue to pay dividends over time.

Google and other search engines examine various undercover factors when ranking a website on the SERPs. These are roughly divided into three brackets: on-page SEO, off-page SEO, and technical SEO.

• On-page SEO – It is the optimization of individual webpages within the boundaries of a website. Some on-page tactics are using short and descriptive URLs, writing enticing title tags and meta descriptions, using descriptive alt tags for images, including keywords in important places, etc.
• Off-page SEO – It comprises any action taken outside the boundaries of a website to improve its ranking improve and perception for search engines. Some off-page SEO tactics are link building, guest blogging, building strong social media presence, earning brand mentions, etc.
• Technical SEO – It is the practice of optimizing a website to help search engines crawl, index, and rank content without any problems. Some technical SEO tactics are improving page speed, optimizing robot.txt, using canonical and hreflang tags, implement responsive design etc.

Benefits of SEO

There are many benefits that you stand to gain with a robust SEO strategy. Few of them are mention below –

• Build trust & credibility: One of the key benefits of SEO is that it boosts your credibility among customers. Ranking high on the SERPs conveys the message that Google and other search engines trust your website, which is why 75% of users tend to cling to the first page of search engines. It makes the user think that you may be the top player in the industry.
• Better user experience: The customers know what they want and when they don’t find it on your website, then it’s going to affect your performance. Better user experience increases your chance of getting more clicks, more leads, and higher conversion rates. They also improve your visibility on the SERPs. SEO involves creation of such site architecture that it’s easier for users to navigate through it, thus providing friendly user experience. With a strong SEO strategy, you stand to gain all the above-mentioned benefits.
• Drive traffic: SEO brings high traffic to your website. Top results on the SERPs get more impressions and clicks, and 68% of all clicks go to the top five results in search results. Users know exactly what they want when they type in their search query. So appearing on the top of SERPs increases your chance of being clicked, thus driving traffic to your site.
• Cost-effective: Perhaps one of the best benefits that you stand to gain with a strong SEO strategy is its cost-effectiveness. SEO targets users who are looking for your products and services actively, so the traffic generated via SEO is more filtered and qualified than any other marketing strategy. The inbound nature of SEO strategies helps lower the cost of lead generation by 61% as compared to outbound strategies. Inbound lead generation activities like search engine optimization, blogging, social media engagement, etc. are relatively cheap and pay off more than satisfactory.

What is PPC?

Pay-Per-Click or PPC advertising is an online marketing model that allows marketers to pay each time when their ad is clicked by an online user. In stark contrast to SEO, where you have to earn every visit, the PPC model of advertising buys every visit to your website. Every time a visitor clicks the ad, they are redirected to the landing page, and you are accountable for that click.

There are different types of PPC ads, such as search ads, display ads, and remarketing campaigns. The most commonly used PPC advertising platform is paid search ads. These ads are triggered when people make commercial queries on search engines. For example, if you are a restaurant owner and someone searches for a local service like “restaurants near me”, it will trigger your PPC ad.

PPC ads are subject to a bidding system known as ad auction. It is an automated process conducted by different search engines to validate the relevancy of ads that appear on the SERPs. At the auction, you can bid on keywords that are relevant to your products or services that you offer. Continuing with the above example, you will want to bid on the keyword “restaurants near me”.

With the limited number of slots for ads on search engines platforms, you have to venture to get the spot you want. This is where bidding comes into play. Apart from the bid, the search engine platforms also determine your position by evaluating factors such as quality score and ad extensions.

Pay-per-click is a highly profitable marketing strategy can generate thousands in revenue for your business. With easy campaign set up facilities, you can get your ads up and running in a matter of minutes and have prospective customers visit your website and leave after being converted.

Benefits of PPC

PPC advertising is a great option for all types of business and there are many benefits that you stand to gain with it. Few of them are mentioned below –

• Immediate results: This is one of the best-liked benefits of PPC by the marketers and business owners. PPC ads drive immediate results. You can start measuring the results as soon as your ad is up and running since the ads start registering on different metrics such as impressions, clicks, etc. You can advertise to millions of people who are looking for products or services that you offer, at the same time.
• Measurable & trackable: One of the best advantages of running PPC ads is that you can measure and track your performance. Tools such as Google Ads, have readily available stats to show performance details such as impressions, clicks, conversions, etc. that are based on the goals of your business. You can track which ads or keywords are bringing in more conversions and returns. By installing conversion tracking, you can see what happens after the customer interacts with your ads. All this information is extremely reliable and can help you make informed and actionable decisions.
• Quality traffic: Because people are already interested in and searching for products or services that you offer, you can easily pull traffic to your website. Since you can choose when and where your ads will appear, the traffic coming to your landing pages will be more refined and more likely to convert.
• Extremely targeted: PPC ads are extremely targeted. You can target keywords through text ads or run remarketing ads based on past online behaviors and interests of your audience or target specific demographic on the display network. Through effective targeting, you can reach new people and re-expose your brand to the old audience.

SEO vs PPC: The difference

Both SEO and PPC are online marketing strategies to boost your overall marketing campaigns. We will delve into the difference between them on four scales – cost, traffic, conversion and ease of use.

1. Cost – It takes a lot of effort to get traffic to your website, whether it is from SEO or PPC. We have discussed earlier that in PPC, you buy every visit to your website, whereas in SEO you earn the visits. In PPC, you only pay when visitors click on your ads. For example, in the cost-per-click advertising in the PPC system, you can set a budget for your ad campaign and can get an estimated calculation for average cost per click for the keywords that you want to target. The point here is that the money you spend on advertising cost is all that you’re charged. Though you spend negligible money on SEO directly, you can often not do SEO by yourself. You may have to render SEO services from an agency because SEO requires a lot of patience and practice. If you don’t understand the functioning of search engines, then you have to hire an SEO expert to carry out your SEO strategies. So, the cost of SEO is indirect.
2. Traffic – As discussed above, 68% of all clicks go to the first five organic results. If you can rank your website in the top 5 spots on search engines, then you will get a continuous flow of unpaid organic traffic. On any given day, SEO traffic is far more than PPC traffic. So making efforts to rank your website for the desired keywords will result in more traffic than paying for those keywords. Upon comparing the price that you will have to pay to rank on the first page of SERPs and the traffic you will receive on ranking higher for SEO and PPC traffics, the SEO (organic) traffic is better. To get PPC traffic, you will also have to pay a much higher cost. Though earning on top 5 organic spot is very difficult due to high competition, in which case, PPC traffic is a good option.
3. Conversion – Conversion occurs when a visitor on your website takes a desired action like make a purchase, sign up for the newsletter, etc. PPC traffic is more likely to convert than SEO traffic as the traffic from the ads is highly targeted. In terms of conversion, SEO traffic is not as actionable after landing on your website because chances are that they might just be conducting research for a product or service. PPC through highly optimized and targeted keywords brings in more conversion-oriented traffic.
4. Ease of use – SEO is a time-taking process that requires a lot of patience and effort. If you’re new to SEO, chances are that you might get completely lost figuring out even simplest of things because of the dense nature of it. Not to say that PPC is easier to do, but it is a lot easier to understand. Since every aspect of PPC is measurable and trackable, you can comprehend the data and even figure it out yourself. But neither is simple if you’re a beginner. Though you can learn SEO and PPC with time, presumably learn PPC faster than SEO, it is better to hire experts in the respective fields before you fry your brain figuring out SEO or lose hundreds of dollars to understand PPC.

Conclusion

Both SEO and PPC are great methods that you should employ in your digital marketing plan. They are both are vastly different and provide different results based on your goals. Though they are plenty fruitful on their own, when integrated, SEO and PPC is the optimal approach to reach the full potential of your marketing strategy.

Reference:

1. SEO vs. PPC: Which Should You Use?