Search engine optimization (SEO) or Pay per click (PPC)? and which one is right for me?
This is a question that thousands of business owners and marketing managers ask themselves daily when searching for methods to appeal a larger audience to increase conversion. This is not a debate, but rather an attempt to identify the needs of your website an your audience.
Depending on your website, the content, the margins available and the amount of time you can invest into selling the prospect. Such considerations invariably impact the method you choose.
We know marketing is a numbers game, but similarly selling the right product or service to the right prospect at the right time is ultimately what conversion is all about (which is why most opt for PPC and less noise to filter in search results).
Similarly, not every product is model-specific of customer-centric from the standpoint of value that paying for each click makes sense from a budgetary point of view. Particularly when you know that your product of service extends beyond the realm of an impulse purchase (such as a high ticket item).
Pay per click marketing gets a mere fragment of the traffic that organic search heralds daily, however not all organic searches are from consumers interested in purchasing. Broad match organic searches may range from curious information gatherers conducting a study for research such as college student, individuals compiling statistical data or a myriad of alternative possibilities.
Also, depending on who’s interests are prominent (yours or theirs), how you position your content and call to action and appeal to the what’s in it for me mentality of the masses using benefits vs. features determines how each audience engages your value proposition.
If it is a fledgling attempt, then regardless of if your paid for that click or someone drifted in on a related search from organic traffic, in either case, you just warmed up another sale for your competition.
Proposing a product or service without firmly setting your conversion objectives by proposing the wrong offer at the wrong time to the wrong prospect is equally as delusive. Timing, context and relevance must lead the charge when combined with any search medium to drive traffic or generate appeal.
Not every prospect purchases instantaneously, some deliberate for days, weeks or months while others act on impulse. Credibility, trust and professionalism is a crucial cornerstone regardless of the promotional platform, so after you manage to attract the crux of your market segment to your pages tracking and refinement should be the next preoccupation. Yet, without visitors to buy your products or skim through your pages for relevant items, none of your compelling calls to action, enticing offers or indelible content will matter, so, it truly does boil down to the quality of traffic.
The advantages of SEO (more potential traffic for conversion) and PPC (Higher Conversion but less volume) are clear. SEO pulls more traffic, which, depending on your landing pages (which could be any page in your site) determine the ultimate outcome of balanced between bounce rate and conversion.
Although PPC can filter out the noise and cut to the chase when it comes to filtering traffic to your content, the likelihood of people clicking your ad vs. an organic result is minuscule since roughly 8 out of 10 choose SEO over paid search results.
However, if a healthy margin is present, the solution is scalable. You can either increase the PPC spend to see if surges for stemmed keywords improve conversion, or hedge it with SEO as a hybrid and eventually wein your pages off PPC marketing.
Pay per click is in a decline at the moment and SEO is on the rise, this could be because of the current economic situation companies feel that investing in SEO will have long term pay off benefits. I agree that pay per click traffic can be shaped to be highly targeted and thus have a higher conversion rate but over the long game SEO is a far better investment
SEO
Ofcourse SEO!! SEO s more indemand than pay per click.