Once primarily reliant on traditional advertising and in-person networking, traditional client acquisition techniques have now shifted to digital platforms. This change has increased rivalry between B2C and B2B businesses, but it has also opened up previously unrealized possibilities for growth and new, genuine ways to interact with customers.
Brands need to have a strong digital marketing strategy if they want to succeed in this new era—to continuously nurture new leads while strengthening relationships with current consumers. In that sense, search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising will unavoidably take center stage in discussions about digital marketing strategies.
Which tactics, however, should organizations prioritize in the great SEO vs. PPC debate to optimize their online visibility and business expansion? When collaborating with a digital marketing agency, which should come first?
Let’s contrast and compare.
PPC vs. SEO
Both SEO and pay-per-click (PPC) marketing are essential for boosting discoverability, generating traffic, building a brand’s authority, and eventually spurring the expansion of a company’s clientele. Both, however, take a unique method to achieve these goals.
The two digital marketing tactics differ mostly in how they are positioned on Google’s search engine result pages (SERPs):
- Organic positioning: SEO aims to propel a brand’s website and all of its subpages to the top of the organic search engine results sites. These are usually the ten non-advertising results in the middle of the results page.
- Paid Ad Positioning: On the other hand, PPC marketing aims to artificially elevate a brand’s website to the top of the page, surpassing even organic search engine results pages.
The fundamental objective of both PPC and SEO marketing is to propel the company website to the top of search results. The likelihood that a page will be clicked on increases with its ranking. The click-through-rate (CTR) for each ranking declines sharply as we go down the rank ladder, according to Search Engine Journal:
- Rank 1 – 28.5% CTR
- Rank 2 – 15.7% CTR
- Rank 3 – 11% CTR
- Rank 4 – 8% CTR
- Rank 5 – 7.2% CTR
- Rank 6 – 5.1% CTR
- Rank 7 – 4% CTR
- Rank 8 – 3.2% CTR
- Rank 9 – 2.8% CTR
- Rank 10 – 2.5% CTR
Generally speaking, choosing between PPC and SEO doesn’t have to be a simple binary option. It’s not a “either, or” choice; instead, most brands will use the advantages of both approaches in a well-rounded plan. This enables them to take two distinct approaches and schedules to customer acquisition and retention.
Generally speaking, SEO calls for a more patient, long-term strategy. Frequently, months will pass before noticeable changes occur. On the other hand, PPC and sponsored search provide a quicker route to ranking success, with the possibility that advertisements will appear at the top of search engine results pages almost immediately. It’s crucial to remember that there is a cost associated with this phony PPC ad boost.
The organic long-term channel: SEO
A keyword or keyword phrase is entered into the search bar whenever someone uses Google or Bing. The majority of users automatically rely on Google to display the best and most pertinent results for their query at the top of the search results page.
Therefore, ranking as high as possible for queries that are directly relevant to the offered goods or services is the aim of any brand. This also applies to inquiries that are tangentially related to the company’s products through pertinent data or subjects.
The engine that raises a brand’s web pages in search engine results is SEO.
In simple language, SEO is the process of making your website better so that it appears higher in Google, according to Search Engine Land. Your chances of being discovered and clicked on increase with the visibility of your pages in search results. Search engine optimization’s ultimate objective is to assist in drawing in website visitors who will eventually become clients, customers, or repeat visits. Actoscript is one of the best digital marketing agency in India.
As previously said, it takes months of consistent work for SEO before pages start to rise in the ranks. It will require time and work, but it is a long-term plan that is well worth it.
SEO strategies: what are they?
SEO tactics are carried out in compliance with the latest modifications to the Google algorithm. It will cover a variety of tactics intended to raise the website’s search engine ranking, such as:
Finding the most pertinent search phrases and queries and implementing them into all content initiatives is known as keyword research.
- Material marketing: Creating excellent, captivating material that showcases the brand’s “experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness” (Google’s Double-E-A-T standards) and is built around pertinent keywords. Blogs, infographics, white papers, eBooks, social media postings, videos, and more can all be included in SEO and content marketing.
- On-Page SEO: This involves making sure that each webpage is optimized for specific keywords and that the content contains
- Meta tags
- Title tags
- Header tags
- URL format
- Image alt text
- Creating links
- Technical SEO: Improving the backend architecture and configuration of the website for search engine crawlers, such as:
- XML sitemaps
- Mobile Optimization
- Site speed
Setup of the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) - schema markup
- Local SEO: Using the brand’s Google Maps and Google My Business pages to optimize the website for local searches.
- Core Web Vitals: Optimizing page metrics such as:
- Largest contentful paint (LCP),
- First input delay (FID),
- Interaction to next paint (INP),
- Cumulative layout shift (CLS) to create a seamless user experience
This channel is pay-per-click: PPC
Brands use PPC (pay-per-click) advertising to buy search engine ads that show up in the sponsored links section at the top of organic search results pages. PPC is part of performance marketing. Anytime a user enters a search term associated with the advertiser’s selected keywords, the advertisement may show up in the prominent sponsored area. Advertisers also pay a price each time the ad is clicked, as the term implies.
The simplest definition of PPC marketing is purchasing site traffic today rather than trying to obtain it naturally through SEO tactics that may take some time to produce.
As a result, even though PPC advertising is most frequently linked to Google Ads, it is also utilized on Bing Ads and the main social media networks, including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter.
How does PPC operate?
Advertisers place bids on particular keywords that are pertinent to their company interests using the supply and demand model of the PPC auction-based system.
The cost of each click will vary depending on several factors, including:
- Competition for keywords: The more companies vying for a certain keyword, the more expensive it will be.
- Keyword length: Accordingly, short or singular keywords will be more in demand, while high-intent long-tail keywords will be less expensive due to their greater niceness.
- Quality score: Search engines evaluate an advertisement’s quality according to standards such as
- Pertinence to the term
- The landing page’s quality
- Click-through rate (CTR) history of the advertisement
- The bid is the highest price the brand is prepared to spend for an ad click. However, the second-highest bidder’s threshold will determine the actual payout amount.
- Location: The price may also differ based on the region a company is aiming for.
PPC strategies: what are they?
A company should think about the following PPC tactics if it wants to make sure that its campaigns yield a return on investment:
- Research and selection of keywords: determining which high-volume keywords, both short-tail and long-tail, are being used by prospective clients.
- Ad development and optimization: crafting catchy ad copy with attention-grabbing headlines and descriptions and incorporating keywords into the body of the text.
- A/B testing is the process of comparing various PPC advertisements to see which ones Google and users prefer.
- Bid Management: Installing bid strategies and automation to optimize bidding by campaign objectives and budget is known as bid management.
- Targeting and retargeting: Targeting customers based on comprehensive customer profiles and then reaching out to customers who have already interacted with or bought from the company.
- Frequent monitoring and optimization: Analyzing campaign performance on an ongoing basis and adjusting as needed to enhance outcomes.
