Many people view search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising as an either-or situation, deciding to focus on one strategy over the other. While SEO is excellent at delivering sustainable, long-term results at a better cost-per-lead than PPC, it does have drawbacks, especially for newer companies.

Instead of choosing between SEO or PPC and spending all your efforts on one strategy, it’s more effective to combine the two. Your focus will depend on your business’s current state and can change as the marketing landscape evolves.

Many companies start with PPC while they wait for their SEO strategy to kick in and then dial back their PPC campaign to reap the rewards of pure organic traffic. However, that doesn’t mean that you can’t switch back to PPC whenever you need an immediate boost to visibility.

If you’re trying to decide between SEO vs. PPC or want a strategy that includes both, reach out to the online marketing experts at Digital Assets Factory. We’ll help you take your online presence to the next level and generate more sales.

The Differences Between SEO vs. PPC

Both SEO and PPC have their advantages and drawbacks. Understanding them can help you design a complementary strategy to get more eyes on your products or services.

SEO

SEO has several benefits that make it especially appealing to marketers and site owners alike. These include:

• SEO builds authority: Many people are skeptical about paid ads and will trust the results of an organic search more. Having improved visibility makes your brand seem more credible, which leads to more trusting customers.
• Free(ish): Organic traffic is free in the sense that you don’t have to pay for every click. SEO represents a relatively low-cost investment that provides a superior ROI on many other forms of marketing, including Google Ads.
• Sustainable: SEO campaigns have a long tail, which means that you’ll still see the results of a campaign well after you’ve stopped spending money on it.
• Optimizing your website improves user experience: Many of the ranking signals also influence how customers interact with your site. You’ll find that adhering to organic SEO principles enhances customer experience and leads to improved lead conversion.

However, SEO takes time and can take several months to deliver results. During this time, you’ll be spending money without anything to show for it. New companies can also struggle to break into the organic traffic market, especially on popular and competitive keywords.

PPC

Search engine marketing has the advantage of offering immediate results for relatively little effort. But if you’re willing to spend the money, you can obtain many of the advantages of SEO without the time investment. PPC also offers other benefits, including:

• Agility: If you regularly offer new products or services, PPC can be a great testing ground to identify interest and compare marketing messages.
• Stability: SEO is vulnerable to algorithm changes, which can cause significant changes to long-term results. PPC is less susceptible to this volatility, and it’s significantly easier to manage.
• Brand visibility: The more people see your brand, the more they’ll recognize it. Even if they don’t click on the ad, simply seeing your brand at the top of the page provides free exposure and leads to increased trust and authority.
• Brand control: PPC ads give you complete control over your messaging and creativity. Since you can control the landing pages for every keyword, you can craft a significantly more coherent brand narrative than organic listings.

The main drawback of PPC, surprisingly, isn’t the cost. It’s the fact that once you stop a Google Ads campaign, you’ll stop seeing results immediately, which means that you’ll need constant investment to reap the benefits of PPC.

You’ll also quickly find that the PPC landscape can expose your digital marketing campaign to competitors, especially with regards to copying your ads and PPC strategy. An experienced Austin PPC agency like Digital Assets Factory can help you avoid this pitfall.

Taking Advantage of Synergies

One of the key differences between SEO vs. PPC is that at its core, SEO is a long-term strategy that delivers long-term results, while PPC is better suited to a short-term campaign. However, there are other less apparent synergies that can make integrating the two even more appealing.

Visibility

One of Google’s most important search engine factors is “authority.” The more people that interact with your site and the more involved you are in a particular niche, the higher your authority and the better your organic ranking.

PPC ads improve visibility without having to optimize your site or content. By simply placing an ad, you can drive more traffic to your site, leading to enhanced credibility and authority. This increase in authority will drive your search engine results ranking up, which means increased organic traffic, which further improves your authority.

Shared Data

The immediacy of PPC advertising makes it an ideal testing bed for organic strategies. In most cases, what works for PPC marketing will help SEO, particularly for keywords and page content. It’s simple enough to test a potential new keyword in a small PPC campaign before focusing more effort on the organic side.

The reverse is also true, as having a wealth of SEO keyword data can enhance your PPC strategy. Instead of doing extensive keyword research, you can use your existing customer search habits to streamline your paid search ads campaign.

Best of all, these synergies between SEO and PPC tend to feed into each other. As you gain more knowledge, you can improve both campaigns, leading to increased traffic and better revenues.

Social Media

If you use paid ads on social media, you can get a wealth of information about your target market. With social media ads, you can target an extremely granular market of individuals and use the best results to get a better picture of your target audience. An Austin SEO agency can help you incorporate this data into your SEO campaign while also reaping the benefits of PPC ads.

Designing the Ultimate Strategy in Digital Marketing

There is a time and place to focus on SEO, PPC, or a mix of both. Many successful digital marketing strategies rely on shifting focus between the two while maximizing the synergies of implementing both at once. Once you start gathering more information and data, you can plan your short-term and long-term strategies accordingly, ensuring that you allocate your resources to maximize results.

If you want to see how effective a PPC/SEO combo really is, get in touch with Digital Assets Factory. We’ve helped dozens of businesses take advantage of all their digital marketing tools for exceptional results, and we can do the same for you.