Date Published: 6-Jun-2014 | By: Shane K Morgan
SEO (search engine optimization) and PPC (pay per click) are the two popular search marketing methods that bring traffic to websites. While SEO generates organic traffic, which is free; PPC generates traffic for which you have to pay. But, it is not always helpful for you to think of free traffic generation. It’s better to do some amount of PPC advertising in today’s changing digital marketing scenario along with SEO.
Growing popularity of PPC
- SEO brings in long lasting results but it takes some time – few weeks and sometimes months or years to see the results. While in PPC, results can be seen and can be measured immediately.
- Popularity of PPC advertising is also growing year on year. According to 2013, State of Paid Search, 72% of businesses reported that they are planning to spend more on PPC in 2014. There is 17% of year on year increase on spending on PPC advertising.
Search engines are emphasizing more on paid/sponsored ads
- Paid ads are occupying big share of space of about 80% on SERPs (search engine results pages), making searchers to scroll down to see the organic results. This indicates that search engines are giving comparatively more importance to PPC ads/sponsored ads than organic results.
- When searched for specific product with brand name, Google search engine is giving the images and prices from different vendors on the most prominent area of SERPs and in an appealing way that makes visitor to select and finish the transaction without visiting the organic result.
- Search engines are displaying the comparison chart for some products and services, saving visitor’s time of comparing different brands or service providers manually. This also makes it easy for the users to make purchase decisions and choose the best.
Prospective customers tend to click on PPC ads
- Generally, users with an intent to purchase tend to click on PPC ads. A recent study by Moz revealed that PPC ads receive two-thirds of clicks from the users, who have intention to purchase.
- Users would click on organic results mostly when they are looking for any information or doing research. So, conversion rate is higher in PPC than in SEO.
PPC ads are highly immune to search engine algorithm changes and updates
- SEO requires constant monitoring and you need to watch out for updates and changes in search engines’ algorithms that affect your website’s search engine rankings.
- Whereas, PPC is algorithm independent. The position of the PPC ad on the search engines would be same irrespective of the changes and updates in search engines’ algorithms provided they have creative ad copy and well optimized landing page.
For small business owners looking for instant visibility on SERPs, PPC is a good alternative.
At the same time they can’t ignore SEO as it builds brand’s credibility and brings in long term results. PPC is 3% effective and SEO is 19% effective (source: Bright Local Survey).
You may also like to read: