SEO Vs PPC - Which is the Better Marketing Tool For Your Small Business?

As a small or home-based business owner, most of you probably already have a website up and running. You set one up primarily to expand your market reach. Most likely, you have also heard about Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) as ways to increase Web traffic to your site. But which is most effective for your business?

Before we go into the pros and cons of PPC and SEO, let's first briefly discuss how online advertising works and why it is important to you.

As means of online advertising, both SEO and PPC rely on the use of keywords on search engines, such as Google, Yahoo!, AOL and MSN, to find relevant Web pages. Search engines use Web Crawlers or Spiders to scan the World Wide Web for web pages that contain content and links that are relevant to the search keyword. Relevant pages are then listed in the search result page in the order of their relevance as judged by the search engines.

This is important because the great majority of Internet users usually don't bother to go very deep in the search result pages. They usually review only the first page of results...maybe clicking on to the second or third pages. If a particular search result doesn't give them what they want, they're off to another keyword search.

That's why web sites that rank high in the search results always get high traffic volume. What's more, this high traffic is consist of pre-qualified prospects - prospects who are actually searching something online as indicated by the keyword they used.

Therefore, the importance of ranking high on relevant searches cannot be over emphasized. It is the primary way to increase web site traffic and eventual conversions. You can achieve high rankings either organically (through SEO) or by paying your way there (through PPC).

So what are some advantages and disadvantages of each tool to increase website traffic?

SEO or Search Engine Optimization - rank websites on the search engine result based on the relevance of the search keyword to its content. It is also known as organic search engine optimization. Here are some advantages and disadvantages.

Advantages of SEO

1. Generating a visitor from organic search engine results will cost you nothing.

2. Your website will be able to hold the ranking it attains through SEO long after the optimization of your website is done. Thus in the long term, SEO can be more cost effective than PPC.

3. Websites that rank high in organic search results are perceived to be more trustworthy by visitors because they are differentiated from paid advertisement listings.

Disadvantages of SEO

1.  Given the billions of pages in the World Wide Web (about 8 billion as of the latest count), and the constantly changing and undisclosed algorithms used by search engines, you really cannot control the ranking of your website in the natural search results. It is always subject to the changing search algorithms used by search engines.

2. If your business belongs to a very competitive sector, it will be quite difficult to land in the few slots high up in the search page results.

3. Because it is a natural search optimization, it will take at least a month - quite often much longer - before you see your website in the first few pages of search results.

4. It is impossible to predict the ranking your site or any of its pages will receive. The algorithms used by search engines change and so does your competition.

Pay-per-click (PPC) Advertising

Pay-per-click Advertising brings traffic to a website when visitors clicking on an advertisement link. You bid on certain keywords that are relevant to your site. You will only be charged if the searcher actually clicks on your ad. Here are some of it's advantages and disadvantages.

Advantages of PPC

1. You'll start seeing results almost immediately. If you bid aggressively, you can even possibly appear on the first page of Google in the top position within hours of activating your PPC campaign.

2. You won't have to spend time and money to optimize your website, or change anything.

3. It can be cost effective since you pay only when your ad is clicked.

4. Your advertising cost is completely under your control because you can set daily, weekly and monthly limits. For instance, you can set $10 daily limit. Once this is reached, your ad is automatically turned-off by the search engine.

5. The results can be tracked, thus you can make adjustments as you see fit.

6. You can choose which page searchers are sent to, thus giving you the opportunity to optimize your landing pages and increase your conversion rate.

7. You can target specific countries and regions, thus giving you additional control over the cost of your ad. You can choose not to display your ads for searchers coming from locations outside your target market.

Disadvantages of PPC

1. There is no long term return for your investment. Once you stop spending, your ads will naturally stop showing up.

2. In general, your ranking is proportional to the amount of your bid. If someone bids a higher amount for the same keyword, your position will go down. Therefore, if you want to maintain your ranking, you may have to bid higher, resulting in higher advertising expenses on your part.

3. Some users who click your PPC ads are just looking for information and are not actually looking to buy or convert to your targeted action.

4. To maximize the ROI of your PPC campaign, you have to invest more time and effort through a steep learning curve.

There you have it. No doubt SEO and PPC advertising works in increasing web traffic to your site. But as to which one you will use, it depends largely on whether or not you want or need immediate search result visibility, the competitiveness of your subject matter, and the content of your site.

If you don't mind waiting months before seeing your site get's a high ranking on the search engines, go for SEO. But if you want or need immediate visibility, then go for PPC. Both will actually cost you money. SEO costs you money both in terms of the cost of hiring someone to optimize your site, and the time lost while fine tuning your site's optimization before you see actual results. Though SEO appears to have the long-term cost advantage, PPC offers you immediate possible increase in our business profit due to instant search result visibility and assured ranking. And remember, for your optimized web site to retain its ranking, continuous tweaking is required.

The best strategy is likely a combination of both strategies. Use a PPC strategy to get some instant traffic and learn from the user behaviors. Taking those lessons, you can tweak your pages and site content to best optimize for SEO and long-term traffic strategies.