Once you build a web­site for your com­pa­ny, every­body wants to know how you plan to push it to the top of search rank­ings; how you will make sure con­sumers can find your site when search­ing for your ser­vices and products. 

Two pri­ma­ry solu­tions to lever­ag­ing a website’s val­ue to earn high­er place­ment in search results are to employ PPC and SEO campaigns. 

Both PPC and SEO have ben­e­fits par­tic­u­lar to their strat­e­gy, and one strat­e­gy is usu­al­ly more favor­able than anoth­er when eval­u­at­ing the type of busi­ness, bud­get, and goals. Once you have the ropes down on either solu­tion, you can run PPC and SEO cam­paigns side by side for the max­i­mum rank­ing results. 

Today, we’ll break down SEO and PPC to the nit­ty-grit­ty to give you a bet­ter idea of what each solu­tion has to offer on its own, how to know which cam­paign is a fit for your com­pa­ny and how to decide between the two options.

What are PPC and SEO?

PPC and SEO are two types of adver­tis­ing that com­pa­nies use to increase traf­fic to their web­site in an effort to boost posi­tion­ing on Google or oth­er search engines and even­tu­al­ly, turn more inter­est­ed shop­pers into con­sumers and loy­al brand advocates. 

PPC and SEO dif­fer in their strat­e­gy, invest­ment and use. Let’s take a look at each.

What Is SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

SEO is one of the most pop­u­lar and fre­quent­ly repeat­ed strings of let­ters in dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing and adver­tis­ing. SEO’s pop­u­lar­i­ty is gar­nered large­ly by the option to get start­ed with a small or nonex­is­tent bud­get. It’s also one of the industry’s most obscure ideas, fre­quent­ly elud­ing busi­ness­es to believe that these few let­ters will be easy as ever to put into action. 

Here’s what SEO is all about:

Define SEO

SEO stands for search engine opti­miza­tion. It involves a series of steps that a mar­ket­ing or SEO team con­tin­u­al­ly imple­ments to give a web­site its best chance at get­ting Google’s atten­tion and keep­ing its mer­it con­sis­tent enough to win traf­fic and shop­pers who purchase.

What is an SEO campaign?

An SEO cam­paign takes sev­er­al vari­ables into con­sid­er­a­tion, the most impor­tant being Google’s algo­rithm and a company’s busi­ness objectives.

First, mar­ket­ing teams track Google’s cur­rent algo­rithm guide­lines. These are basic expec­ta­tions that the search engine has laid out to ensure that your web­site meets the bare min­i­mum suf­fi­cien­cy for show­ing its dig­i­tal face to consumers. 

If your web­site is not prim and pol­ished, you can for­get about Google ever sug­gest­ing its con­sumers (their searchers, your poten­tial buy­ers) have a look at it.

On the flip side, if you check off the box on every expec­ta­tion, you have a fight­ing chance. From this viable start­ing point, you have to keep track of every update Google makes on its expec­ta­tions, meet them and then mea­sure how well you’re meet­ing the algo­rithm demands com­pared to competitors. 

Sec­ond, the mar­ket­ing team runs your company’s objec­tives along­side a Google-tai­lored web­site. Is the objec­tive to have more peo­ple watch videos? To sign up for the email? To know your brand name? To pur­chase something? 

An SEO strat­e­gy takes these two con­cepts side by side and facil­i­tates their ongo­ing and ever-evolv­ing partnership. 

SEO campaign

What is Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising

PPC is the oth­er com­mon catch­phrase float­ing around the dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing and adver­tis­ing world, and its three lit­tle let­ters can be just as mis­lead­ing to new busi­ness strategists. 

Define PPC

PPC stands for pay-per-click adver­tis­ing. It is a spe­cial type of adver­tis­ing that allows com­pa­nies to iden­ti­fy the most pop­u­lar search terms in their mar­ket and bid on the phras­es and prices that make the most sense for their bud­get. Com­pa­nies only pay when some­body actu­al­ly clicks over from the ad to their site, hence the name. 

What is a PPC campaign?

A PPC cam­paign is intri­cate and com­plex. Even though it sounds sim­ple, deter­min­ing which key­words will yield the most traf­fic, how much your com­pa­ny can real­is­ti­cal­ly afford to pay for hypo­thet­i­cal best-case results and how to attract the right con­sumers (the ones who will buy or shop or look or sign up to relin­quish per­son­al data) is a full map. It takes time, research and an upfront finan­cial investment. 

Ide­al­ly, you’ll one day run SEO and PPC cam­paigns simul­ta­ne­ous­ly. Until then, here are a few dif­fer­en­ti­at­ing fea­tures that can help you decide.

PPC campaign

SEO vs PPC Benefits

Benefits of SEO

  • Gen­er­ate high-qual­i­ty traffic
  • Free (if you do all the labor yourself)
  • Cre­ate dig­i­tal mar­ket lead­er­ship position
  • Boost PR
  • Gen­er­ate more traf­fic than through PPC (if done correctly)
  • Con­tin­u­al web­site main­te­nance due to keep­ing up with search engine standards.

Benefits of PPC

  • Boost traf­fic to a website
  • Increase sales
  • Select who sees which ads when
  • Con­trol adver­tis­ing costs
  • Ana­lyze data on adver­tis­ing performance
  • Increase brand awareness
  • Mea­sure ROI
  • Min­i­mal cre­ative effort (can repeat campaigns)

Top Candidates for SEO versus PPC

Some com­pa­nies are bet­ter fits for one or the oth­er type of traf­fic gen­er­a­tion. Take a look below to see which is best for you:

Top Candidates for SEO

  • Com­pa­nies who already have a mar­ket for their product/service
  • Com­pa­nies who have the lux­u­ry of time on their side
  • Com­pa­nies with flex­i­ble CMS contracts
  • Goals to become an indus­try pil­lar, not a pop­u­lar fan page
  • Com­pa­nies with a bud­get to spend: yes, it’s pos­si­ble to do it on your own for free, but you’ll get more out of it if you either devote all of your time or pay a gen­er­ous fee to a professional

Top Candidates for PPC

  • Small com­pa­nies with a small bud­get who need to ini­ti­ate the traf­fic dri­ving process
  • Com­pa­nies with events to pro­mote to consumers
  • Big com­pa­nies with big bud­gets and research teams

Rosy Strategies

Rosy Strate­gies is a lead­ing provider of mar­ket­ing solu­tions to small, medi­um and grow­ing busi­ness­es. We have sim­ple rec­om­men­da­tions and soft­ware options that facil­i­tate your company’s devel­op­ment as you stride toward its potential. 

Reach out to our team to learn more about the solu­tions we offer and find out how our experts would advise you. We look for­ward to work­ing with you!