Most online entrepreneurs prefer to use SEO over PPC to drive traffic to their website. For them, SEO is better because its free and you can maximize the benefits you get out of it.
Then again, according to a study conducted by digital.gov entitled “HTTPS and Other Ranking Factors,” the downside of solely relying on SEO is it will take time before you can reap the traffic that you need for your website. The process of writing the content, building the links, page optimization, and Google indexing will take more than a month. This means that you would also have to wait to see if your effort will pay off.
PPC, on the other hand, gives an almost instant result. Google, Facebook, and other ad platforms provide insights and data to advertisers.
So, the question now is which should you choose – SEO or PPC?
According to a study entitled “Search Engine Optimization and Pay-per-Click Marketing Strategies,” the clear and direct answer to this is you need both SEO and PPC. However, since much attention has been given to SEO as a strategy to improve site conversion, this time we will explore the ways to use PPC as a complementary tool to SEO.
Below are three ways PPC fills in the gap of SEO in sending the message to your target market:
1. PPC improves website visibility on search engine
If you were able to land first by an organic search result of keywords, you did well! Then again, before you celebrate, check what are the other 4 pages listed before your website.
These 4 sites listed higher than your website are PPC ads. The point is you have to use SEO along with PPC to maximize results. To make sure that your target market sees and clicks your website first, complement your SEO strategy with PPC ads.
It’s also important to show ads with target keywords that you’re not using yet for organic keyword search ranking. This is an easy method to improve your visibility on SERPs while waiting for your SEO strategies to show positive results.
It’s a fact that ads shown on the first page have low rates in terms of click-throughs compared to organic search results on the same page, but a study shows that people still click on these ads. As a matter of fact, almost 70% of searchers click on PPC ads while they search for a service or a product.
Being the first in both paid search results and organic keyword search will speak a lot of how established your presence is in the market.
2. Utilize PPC ads to increase site traffic and links for SEO
According to OCLC in a recent study they conducted, SEO strategy banks primarily on content. Content drives domain authority, traffic, and links. Then again, for you to reap the results of your SEO strategy, people have to read, share, and link to your content.
As opposed to SEO, PPC is an easier way to advertise your content and get your target market to read your content. Aside from that, PPC ads are also cost-efficient compared to SEO because you only need to bid on keywords. In SEO, you have to bid on conversion-based campaigns.
Lastly, the best thing about PPCs is that you can choose the market to whom you will show your content. By using Google, you can choose your target market by viewing their browsing activities. Also, social networking sites allow you to target particular interests and job titles.
3. Make use of PPC as a test environment for SEO
As cited earlier, the challenge of SEO is you have to wait before you can check the effectiveness of your strategy. You have to give time to see if your content works, if your backlinks will convert better, or if your optimization efforts served its purpose.
Things are different with PPC. You can simply bid on a keyword, push it live, and generate the necessary data afterward.
In Adwords, for instance, you will see these:
- What keywords are clicked the most?
- What pages get a good quality score?
- What keywords have the best quality scores?
- What are the exit rates, time on page rate, and bounce rates?
The data you will get from these questions will tell you all that you have to know about your audience’s reaction to your content. This data will, in turn, tell you how organic visitors perceive your content, how impactful your headline is, and many more. The results will help you adjust your input accordingly.
With all the pieces of information that are shared here, you know by now that SEO and PPC are better together. To increase traffic to your website, to make your target market read your content, and to help your website convert better, you have to complement SEO with PPC.
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