SEO or PPC advertising? Can both be used? In order to answer this question, you must clearly understand all the pros and cons of SEO and PPC advertising.

The main difference between search engine optimization (SEO) and PPC advertising is that traffic coming from SEO is free and traffic from PPC is not free (PPC stands for Pay Per Click, as the name suggests, you have to pay per click).

SEO and PPC advertising are part of Search Engine Marketing (SEM) that you can use as one of the tools for your online advertising marketing campaign.

In this article, we’ll go through the main differences between the two using the following parameters: position in search results, costs, traffic potential, conversion and usability

Organic Traffic or Paid Search Ads?

Position in search results

In order to appear in the first positions of paid search results, you don’t need to spend a lot of effort. It just takes a little analysis and money. But, if you run out of money, you will disappear from the first pages.

In order to appear in the first positions of organic traffic, you need careful optimization and at least three months of work, but you are not tied to money, so you will remain in the visibility of search engines if your SEO specialist works well.

SEO: You can get first page positions if your site is optimized for search engines.

PPC: You can place your ad on the first page by paying a higher CPC.

Price

We mentioned above that SEO traffic is free as opposed to PPC, but you need to understand that getting free traffic from search engines takes a lot of effort and hard work. The competition is tough, so you really need to have a quality website and a great plan in order to get one of the top five positions. If you are unfamiliar with how search engines work or don’t know anything about SEO, then the best way to get traffic is to hire an SEO expert to do the work for you.

The PPC price depends on a number of factors. For example, the CPC of advertising in the most popular PPC system Google Adwords depends on the popularity of the keyword, the number of advertisers who want to use a specific keyword, and the number of linked websites that have ad positions for a specific keyword. It sounds complicated, and in fact it is, despite Google’s efforts to simplify the entire system.

The good thing about PPC is that you can choose whether to pay you for clicks, views, or conversions. In addition, you can pre-determine your daily budget and pay without going beyond it, as well as calculate the average CPC for the keywords you want to target.

SEO: The cost of SEO is not direct. You don’t have to pay to get to the first page, but you may have to pay for the services of an SEO specialist if you cannot do SEO on your own.

PPC: You pay for every click people make by clicking on your link. The Keyword Tool can help you calculate how much you can pay.

Traffic potential

What will drive more traffic to your site: SEO or contextual advertising?

SEO (organic traffic) is more than traffic from contextual advertising, so if you manage to rank your website for the right keywords in organic search results, you will receive much more traffic than using contextual advertising when paying for interactions with selected keywords for which ads are shown.

This is because when you are in one of the top 5 positions, you can expect a continuous stream of traffic without paying anything (the actual traffic volume depends on how popular the keyword is).

So, if you compare SEO traffic to PPC traffic, organic traffic is better. On the other hand, it is very difficult to get positions on the first page, so paying for traffic may be the only option, since positions on the second and third pages will probably not bring traffic, or they will, but very little.

SEO: organic traffic is continuous as long as you rank first.

PPC: PPC links also can get more clicks, but you have to pay some money for it.

Conversion

Which ad is more effective in terms of conversion: PPC or SEO? Which visitor is more likely to make a purchase, check in on a form, or respond to any other call to action?

If your ad is highly targeted and optimized, then a visitor who follows a contextual ad link is more likely to take an action than a visitor who follows an organic link.

The reason is that a web page can rank for different keywords, so a visitor may be looking for a product that is not the product on a particular page.

On the other hand, if you are running successful contextual advertising, you will only get clicks from visitors who are 100% interested in your content or your product.

SEO: Organic traffic is better than other forms of traffic (like social media), but not as good in terms of conversion as PPC traffic.

PPC: Highly Optimized Keywords will generate more conversions but cost more.

Ease of use:

Neither SEO nor PPC advertising is easy to do if you do not have the necessary knowledge and experience.

Setting up SEO is a long process that will take lots of time and effort. It can take months or even years.

To get good results from PPC advertising, you must either take a training course or hire a PPC specialist, otherwise you can lose several hundred dollars before you understand how it works.

The bottom line is that you need to use both contextual advertising and SEO as part of your online marketing campaign.
PPC advertising can give you faster results so you can run PPC ads and verify which keywords are converting best and then test the SEO for those keywords.

Use PPC if you have a high converting product and use SEO if you have a limited advertising budget.

SEO tuning can take some time, but you will remain visible to search engines if you run out of money, unlike contextual advertising, where when you stop paying for clicks, traffic also stops.