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Quick Links: Search Engine Optimisation
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The Internet is a constantly evolving entity that has brought about many changes in the world of marketing. The Internet today brings with itself the benefit of distribution of information and media at a much lower cost to audiences across the globe. Web has a unique quality, and that is its interactive nature, both in terms of providing responses and obtaining responses. Online marketing strategies need to target on this very characteristic of the web medium.
Presently, there are mainly four tools that help marketers reach out to online users. These are: search engine optimization, email marketing, banners and portal and PPC (pay per click). PPC and SEO are the online marketing techniques that are used to attract the target audiences to specific websites. Both SEO and PPC serve as preferable marketing tools for starters entering the online marketing arena.
Even though both SEO and PPC have their own advantages, marketers often get confused about which marketing tool to choose? To tackle this controversy, let’s first consider what each option offers.
Let us first consider the definition of traditional Search Engine Optimization. It refers to the process of tweaking or optimizing your website by incorporating certain keywords or key phrases. These key words or key phrases are generally words related to your business for which you want to attract web surfers who are looking for these words on search engines. This tweaking is not only related to the home page of the website but it is done on all the sub pages as well to gain maximum results and maximum visibility. Apart from key words, other elements that can prove to be beneficial in driving traffic towards your website are Meta tags, link building, link structures and your website content quality. Yes, your website content quality can not be neglected if it is optimized because visitors would not hang around on your website until they find something worth investing their time effort that ends as soon as your website has been optimized but that is not the truth.
SEO is a time consuming process in which you will have to constantly update your content to attract traffic. One needs to make sure that all the crawler based search engines are able to locate your site and include the maximum pages possible in their indices. Crawler based search engines generally start from the first page of your website and then crawl into the rest of the pages.
Search engine optimization requires you to keep a constant vigil on your page rankings in search results and make the necessary changes and directory submissions through the course of time to keep your website on top. One also needs to ensure that the site is listed in major directories such has Yahoo and Open Directory.
To put it precisely, Pay Per Click is a sponsored marketing strategy in which a marketer or website owner buys visitors or clicks from search engines. In this a marketer selects certain keywords or key phrases and then makes a listing that will come up each time someone searches for that word in the search engine. The marketer pays a specific amount for every click that is made on the listing created by him, which in turn leads the visitor to his website. Hence PPC search engine advertising enable advertisers to attain top rankings for their websites on search engines by paying for specific key words or phrases related to their website or businesses. If other marketers also select the same keyword or key phrase as yours then the competition increases and one needs to bid to win the highest position. The one who is ready to pay the highest amount shows up the first and rest of them follow in the same order. PPC advertising proves to be an effective marketing tool in attracting traffic for key words that already face high competition in natural search results. Some search engines include pay per click advertising in natural search results whereas search engines like Google show them under a separate bar that reads sponsored results, to maintain the integrity of natural searches.
Another added benefit of PPC is that if you pay for your listings in one search engine then those listings are distributed to partner sites as well. This means if you bid for one of the top five positions in a particular search engine then your listings will show up in top positions in its partner sites as well.
Pay per click has allowed marketers to straight away pay their way up to search engine rankings rather than wait for the natural or organic processes like SEO to yield results, which take time and efforts.
Both the marketing strategies have their own benefits and disadvantages. Their advantages and limitations can be analyzed on the following basis-
Both the strategies, SEO and PPC require an initial investment. Search engine optimization requires initial investment of time and effort. A marketer who wants to implement SEO will need dedicated resources to understand modern web technology and search engine’s algorithms to optimize the website content, building link popularity and submit the website in online directories. On the other hand a PPC campaign would require time as well as money. The marketer needs to spend the time to create effective listings and offer bids to surpass competitors and procure highest search engine rankings. Hence hiring an SEO firm to optimize your website would require a higher initial investment than starting a PPC campaign. Sustenance
When it comes to sustaining a SEO process or a PPC campaign, both have their own disadvantages. With regard to SEO, the sustenance cost is often inexpensive as one just needs to keep a check on the search engine ranking and optimize it accordingly with key words and link building. On the other hand, in case of a PPC campaign, to keep the return of investment high, an enterprise would need to spend considerable time in analyzing the campaigns, negotiating bids and to constantly come up with creative advertising copy. Money is the major fuel for a PPC campaign, the moment one stops investing money, the traffic to your website comes to a screeching halt. Hence, PPC has a high cost of sustenance.
Studies reveal that in terms of return on investment, natural SEO pays off in the long run. This means even though SEO is laborious and takes more time to yield results, it offers much higher return on investment than PPC. There are various factors that lead to such an outcome.
A major factor that leads to more RoI in case of SEO is the browsing habits of users. Search engine users usually find natural search engine results much more genuine than the sponsored results. Hence they click more on the natural results. Second factor is that link building leads to a better networking on the World Wide Web. Acquiring links that point to website to enhance website’s link popularity is one of the most common practices for improving search rankings through SEO. These links drive traffic from search engines and ensure lasting results by offering top rankings.
When it comes to reaching across search engines, PPC stands as a clear winner. The affiliate marketing programmes of search engines also allow PPC campaigns to address websites and portals of other search engines as well. This eventually leads to higher traffic generated to the advertiser’s website. On the other hand to get the same results from SEO, a marketer will have to undertake an extensive link building and listing exercise across various search engines, which will be tedious as well as more time consuming.
The major drawback of PPC is that it is increasingly exposed to click fraud. A click fraud is either a robotic script that constantly clicks on competitor’s PPC link without driving any actual traffic or frequently running a search without clicking on a PPC link, which causes the link to be disabled because of a low click rate. Click fraud is an attack on pay per click search engine marketing to decelerate its productivity. On the contrary, a natural SEO process is not affected by such frauds.
After analyzing the pros and cons of the situation, we can see that if one wants to improve quality and quantity in less time, then PPC is the right marketing strategy because as a short term strategy it has clear edge over SEO. A PPC with same investment as SEO will yield results earlier than the SEO process. On the contrary, if you want higher return on investment and want a strategy that lasts for long then natural SEO is the right process. It is not only runs longer than a PPC but also helps in enhancing the branding.
While both the processes have their own advantage and disadvantages and are best in their own way in particular situations, best results can be found if both f them are used simultaneously. PPC and SEO are complementary strategies; you need to combine their strengths to develop a strong marketing campaign. Studies reveal that companies that targeted online users through SEO and PPC campaigns show a remarkably higher ROI with natural search engine results. A campaign that covers both PPC and SOE helps marketers to increase the density of his listings on search result pages. A PPC program aids in recognizing most successful search terms which can then be used t optimize the website. SEO results can be used to adjust PPC budgets.
Hence the bottom line is that for an advertiser to experience the benefits of SEO and PPC would be to begin a SEO campaign and simultaneously gain an essence of PPC while the SEO campaign gains momentum.
