The two most common ways to promote your business on search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc is through Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay Per Click (PPC). The most glaring feature of SEO and PPC is that the former is free while the latter is paid.
Most people tend to ask which one is better for their business, but this depends on so many factors like your business current situation, objectives and marketplace. You will get to know the right one for your business as we unveil the contrast between SEO and PPC search engine marketing strategies, alternatively, you can check a comprehensive article on it HERE

THE PROS OF SEO

Cost Friendly

In search engine marketing techniques, SEO is the most cost-effective in contrast with other strategies in delivering relevant traffic to your website thereby giving your business brand awareness.

Authority

When your website is on top of the search engine results, it suggests that your business is a leader in the industry; this will make the audience to prefer doing business with you.

Competitive Advantage
When a website is established well in the search engine organic results, it has a strategic advantage over its competitors, and the only way those competitors can compete is to spend money.

Return On Investment
Organic search engine results can provide a good return on investment than any other form of paid search engine marketing strategies, the returns it brings outweighs the efforts put into achieving the results.

Better Click Through Rate (CTR)
Where most people find about websites is mostly through organic search results, so investing in SEO will lead to more traffic and more users will be able to find your website.

THE CONS OF SEO

Strategic Effort
Creating a successful SEO campaign requires a lot of effort to build and maintain it. It is an ongoing process that involves three different actions which are; Technical, On-page and Off-page SEO. This requires technical mastery and expertise to carry out successful SEO strategies.

Implementation Time
Carrying out successful SEO strategies requires a lot of time, you need to dedicate your time to executing everything that is needed to be done.

Gradual Results
In SEO, you cannot see the results of your optimizations immediately; results can take some months before it starts to come by.

 

 

THE PROS OF PPC

Brand Exposure
Paid search offers a great awareness to business, even if your website is not clicked but the visibility it gets at the top of the search engine result pages notifies them of its existence, and this comes at a $0 fee.

Position On The Page
PPC offers ads in different places on the search engine result pages including the top spot. With the four ads on desktop and three on mobile, this gives users the 100% opportunity to see your business before the first scroll, which translates to more awareness and sales.

Business Product Ads
Paid search offers the optimization of ads in a visual way that is not available in organic search, it comes in the form of Product Listing Ads (PLAs) whereby it displays the products you are offering the search engine result pages. This gives more click-through rates and brings more sales.

Targeted Campaign
PPC offers a laser-targeted ad directed at the front of the potential customers. The ads can be targeted according to the search keywords, language, device, time of the day or week, location, sex, interests, and audiences based on previous visits, etc.

Speed
Unlike organic search result strategies that take a lot of time to implement, a PPC campaign can be created in days and the visibility comes up in weeks. This is a faster way to get at the forefront of customers.

 

THE CONS OF PPC

High Cost
The cost of placing ads through PPC is high especially if you are targeting different audiences and personas, hence the reason why it is called Pay Per Click.

Bidding Wars
It is not uncommon to get into bidding wars with rival businesses, which can increase your costs and you have to be watchful all the time at the results.

Trust Issues
People most often don’t trust paid search results and sometimes avoid them whenever it comes up. They have more trust in the organic search results because they believe it comes naturally without being influenced.

Strategies Can Be Copied
With PPC, there is no much freedom to personalize your creativity skills, because if competitors like your ad copy, they might copy it and use it for their marketing campaign too.

Constant Investment
PPC requires momentary investment in the campaign strategies and the moment you stop your ad campaign, that’s the moment your leads generation ends. So PPC requires constant investment to maintain the results.