Pay per click (PPC) has been around for a long time and is a well known and trusted way of increasing traffic to your site. PPC uses online advertisements within the likes of search engines, so that people will click on them and be directed to your website. What has made PPC so popular and effective is that you only pay when a user actually clicks through to your site, so there is little wastage. The argument against this however, is the cost does not take your bounce rate into consideration, so a user could click through to your site and then click straight back out again without even browsing your site, and you would still need to pay for this as it is technically a click-through.

SEO on the other hand is an alternative way of driving traffic without having to pay for it. You may choose to employ a SEO company and pay for their services, but depending on the agreement you have with them, you will probably not be paying for every click. Search marketing strategies can be done via companies themselves which reduces the cost even further. The SEO method of increasing traffic to your website is done in a more natural way and obviously encourages people through information and content as opposed to a blatant advertisement.

Most web design companies will offer both SEO and PPC services but there are people who often prefer one to the other. Old school online marketers may think PPC is the best way to go as you can be clear in your advertisement and can add a cost per click to your marketing strategy which makes valuating your site and defining profit margins easier. Using advertisements as your main source of attraction also means you can use tools such as Google Adwords to enhance the effectiveness of it.

Those more in favour of search engine marketing and optimisation will tell you different. They will claim that a natural search is better in terms of search engine ranking and company reputation, SEO is also often perceived as being a more sophisticated method of marketing as you are getting inside the consumer’s mindset as opposed to just showing them an advertisement and there is the obvious benefit that you are increasing your click through rate CTR without having to spend any more money.

There is a common misconception that you only need to use one of the above methods, but is there harm in using both? If search engine optimization technically doesn’t cost you any more then why not use it as well? There is also a rather obvious point that if your natural search links and display adverts show on different search results then you in fact getting more online traffic over all. Also, if you already have a PPC strategy in place and use the likes of Google Adwords to identify strong keywords, then you are halfway there to getting your SEO strategy anyway, so there is nothing to lose.

On its own, pay per click advertising, or PPC, is limited in its effectiveness. By combining PPC with a well thought out search engine optimization strategy, however, your online business can fare much better. This is because both PPC and SEO have various strengths, which means that, taken together, they can complement each other very well.

PPC, for example, can be both controlled and predicted fairly easily. It can be deliberately targeted to specific users at specific times, such as on specific days and in particular parts of the world. It is also, however, increasingly expensive. SEO, on the other hand, while often cheaper, is the more difficult to control. PPC is instantaneous in both its implementation and effect, going live within minutes and immediately drawing visitors directly to a target webpage. Search engine optimisation, meanwhile, is more organic. Its forte is in gradually attracting more visitors over time through a variety of different entry points – in fact, onto any page of yours that has been indexed by the search engines. This means that it is the user who has a bit more control of the experience.

Many companies will tend to choose between PPC and SEO, rather than making use of both simultaneously. Money will get spent on PPC campaigns that just don’t generate the visits and above all, the sales, to justify the outlay. Businesses mostly using search engine optimisation services, meanwhile, will often lament what they feel to be the lost time between when it is implemented and the point at which an appreciable increase in site visitors and resulting sales occurs. This lack of an instant impact is not ideal when you have a specially timed campaign that you wish to promote, for example if you are an online shop that wishes to market a particular range at popular times of the year such as Christmas or Halloween.

What you may wish to do instead is combine the two methods strategically. You can choose keywords to ensure a good longer term flow of visitors, but also place a PPC advertisement at the aforementioned times of the year to heighten your shorter term impact. This is particularly handy when you have a one-time-only sales event where SEO on its own just can’t make its impact quickly enough.

You can also use PPC as part of your internet reputation management to divert attention from the bad news or reviews that can so easily populate the first page of the search results when a user searches for your brand or related keywords. Another benefit is that with Google Adwords, you can even get your PPC advertisement to appear on the search engine results page when a user searches for your rival’s brand. So you may not even need them to search for your own keywords to be able to produce results!

For more information on how to make the most of SEO, just get in touch with us today, here at SearchEngineOptimization.co.uk.