How To Choose Between SEO and Paid Ads for Your Business

Search engines are the primary access point on the Internet for most people. Consequently, positioning their website on the front of a search engine result page (SERP) is essential for the success of online businesses.

Although everyone agrees that ranking on search engines is essential, the method of doing so is still hotly contested. Search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) adverts have the common goal of helping your website appear at the top of search engine results.

SEO involves optimizing your website content, so that it can be naturally found at the top of search engine results for specific keywords. PPC, on the other hand, means you pay to appear in the results of certain keywords. Although you appear in results for the keyword, with PPC, you only pay when your website is visited.

Identifying which option is best for you will help you optimize your resources for maximum impact. Here are vital factors to consider when making a choice:

Your Budget

Because PPC is paid advertising, it tends to do better with larger budgets. Ad sets on most PPC platforms have a learning curve. During that learning curve, the ad’s algorithm calibrates itself to understand better how to reach your preferred audience. The downside to the learning curve is that it’s done on your money (and time). If your business is in a highly competitive industry, PPC costs can be quite high and even unprofitable.

SEO, on the other hand, requires you only to invest your time. There are, however, paid tools and agencies like Riserr that can help companies achieve their SEO goals with ease.

Time Constraints

SEO is a long-term strategy. It takes a while before you can begin to see tangible returns. When properly implemented, SEO can produce yields for a long time. However, not all projects have the luxury of a lengthy deadline.

With PPC, the results are immediate. If the keywords you’re paying for are highly sought-after, you can begin to see an uptick in traffic in a matter of hours.

For instance, if you’re offering deadline deals on your website and looking to push traffic in, PPC can help you get the instant traffic you need.

How Much Effort You’re Willing to Put In

SEO, being a long-term strategy, requires you to be patient and consistent. In addition to priming your website for the search engine algorithms to find it, you have to put tens of hours into generating backlinks and writing SEO-friendly articles and guest posts for other websites. As you can imagine, it’s a task that requires commitment and an eye for detail.

In comparison, the effort required for running PPC ads is minimal. Once you’ve set up the ads to run, the rest of the work is in monitoring your traffic reports and making adjustments accordingly.

Bottom Line

SEO and PPC are both great ways to position one’s website in front of the people who need your service. Choosing between both is more dependent on what your business needs. In most cases, you should use both strategies.

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