Anyone who is involved in business knows that a business can’t get very far without a proper marketing and advertising strategy. There are dozens of ways for you to promote your business and bring customers through your door, chances are that you’ve tried almost all of them.
Online marketing is definitely one of the best ways for you to promote your business for today and tomorrow. Traditional outbound marketing consisting of flyers, cold calling, and intrusive television adverts are a thing of the past.
Two of the most popular strategies used in online marketing are Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay-Per-Click (PPC). Let’s take a look at 5 reasons why SEO triumphs PPC.
1) 70-80% of Users Don’t Pay Attention to Paid Ads
A market research company known as GfK conducted an eye tracking study through their User Experience team. The aim of the study was to see what parts of a search engine results page got the most attention from internet users.
The results were quite shocking, to say the least.
The study found that 100% of participants viewed the organic search results, for an average of 0.8 seconds per search. Between 70% and 80% of participants ignored the PPC adverts—those that did view the paid ads, only viewed them for an average of 0.135 seconds per search.
2) PPC Is Unsuitable for the Long-Term
Experts within the online marketing industry usually recommend a budget of at least a few hundred dollars per day when you’re running a PPC campaign—of course, this can depend on many factors such as competition and your business goals. Even if you have an extremely large budget, the small amount of traffic that you receive will stop as soon as your PPC campaign does.
SEO is a much better strategy if you are planning for long-term success. Don’t want to spend hundreds per day for your business to be seen? You don’t have to. An SEO agency will be able to work within your budget, and the best thing is that you will still receive traffic for several months after you stop the SEO campaign.
3) You Will Need to Conduct Testing before Starting a PPC Campaign
There are many technical factors of a PPC campaign, including the following: campaign type, target location, bid strategy, ad extensions, and keywords. Even if you’re planning on hiring a PPC expert, you’ll find that you’ll still need to be involved in the campaign and this can be overwhelming for someone without a technical background.
A lot of testing is usually required before you “hit the nail on the head” with PPC, and you’ll be faced with a lot of pressure as days go by and your budget dwindles.
On the other hand, you’ll be able to take a backseat if you opt for an SEO campaign. Apart from speaking with the marketers about the keywords you want to rank for, there isn’t much more you need to discuss. SEO agencies conduct their own testing frequently and they definitely stay updated with all the latest changes in the industry.
4) The Dark Side of PPC: Bidding Wars and Click Fraud
The “dark side” of PPC is never really talked about by business owners or online marketers, but it’s something that we all know about.
Bidding wars can occur quite frequently, especially if you are bidding for a keyword that is highly competitive. During a bidding war, it’s easy to stop thinking logically and let your emotions do the work—this is an easy way to spend more than you can afford.
Click fraud is another thing that you need to look out for when you’re running a PPC campaign—it can be extremely damaging to your business because even if you do notice it, it’s hard to stop it. Click fraud occurs when your competitors click on your ads from different IP addresses and drain your advertising budget.
5) Organic Search Results Convey Trust and Reliability
It’s no surprise that organic search results convey trust and reliability. The higher you can rank on the search engine results page, the more trustworthy and reliable your business is going to look to your potential customers.
A ranking that has been paid for will never have the same impact as one that has been earned.
Which One Should You Choose?
We’ve bashed the PPC strategy around quite a lot, which is probably unfair. PPC does have its uses, but the vast majority of business owners are going to see much better results from an SEO campaign.
If your main objective is to bring traffic to your website on a short-term basis then PPC is definitely the way to go. However, if you’re looking for long-term and sustainable traffic that is going to be more cost-effective, you can’t go wrong with SEO.
