SEO vs PPC

Written by Sarah Price  |  July 4, 2013

It’s been a long time been drinks and blog posts, and I’m sorry for the lack of insight, but I’ve been inspired by a similar question from a number of clients this week, to write a post on this topic. So..

SEO? PPC? What to do…..?
Where is best to invest those scarce marketing dollars? Should you avoid either altogether? For small businesses particularly, this can prove to be quite a vexing question.

For those that are unaware, SEO or search engine optimisation, put simply involves optimising your website to enable it to achieve the highest possible rank in search engines. This is something of an involved task, and I have discussed this topic here. Generally speaking, unless you or someone within your organisation has expertise in this area, you will need to engage an external consultant to monitor and manage this on your behalf.  It is an ongoing activity, that requires regular monitoring and maintenance, rather than a set and forget activity.  The emphasis here is on organic traffic (or unpaid traffic) from search engines .

PPC or Pay per click advertising involves as the name suggests, paying for traffic by using advertising programs offered by search engines, such as Google Adwords, Yahoo Search marketing and others.

This debate is by no means a new one and has raged since the dawn of, well the dawn of paid search advertising certainly. Some of my favourite articles on this debate are here and here  

While it really depends on your budget, your business goals, and whether you want to build traffic to your site , quickly or slowly, the short answer is  you should be investing in both. Both will drive traffic qualified traffic to your site, and if implemented correctly will help convert this traffic to sales and or loyal customers.  If  your resources are limited though, I recommend assessing your goals (both long and short term), use analytics to assess both the current quality and quantity of qualified traffic to your site, and as much as possible seek professional advice. Remember also that good marketing practice should always be guided by your strategy, so make sure you assess your investment in these areas  a strategic context.  And if you do seek external help in implementing this, make sure it is by a professional and ethical consultant.

Will your business be investing in PPC or SEO this financial year? Or both? What do you think yields a higher investment?

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