So, you have a website - maybe it has been established for a while, maybe it’s new. We then enter into the ‘Field of Dreams’: if you build it, they will come. Right?
Unfortunately, this is only the case in the movies. Once you have built a website you need to drive traffic to it and make sure that it can be found in search engine results. Two great ways to achieve this are Pay Per Click and SEO; but which should you use?
Let’s start by understanding the SERP (Search Engine Results Page).
There are pay per click results in the form of Google Shopping and search ads. If you use PPC, your ads can appear at the top of the page. You can also see PPC ads at the bottom of the page after the first set of organic results.
When the search has a local intent you can also see Google Business Profile results, they can also be referred to as the local pack or snack pack. These are free listings and qualify as organic results: Google uses ranking factors to decide which businesses to put there. With some searches, you’ll see a pay per click ad here too: in that case, the local pack increases from three results to four.
Below paid as and Google Business Profile results you will find the the traditional organic results. In order for your website pages to be found here, you will need to make sure they are optimised for search engines.
Other organic results you can see include featured snippets, knowledge panels, job listings, event listings, hotel and flight results and more recently Googles generative search results which are generated with the help of AI.
Deciding on whether to use PPC or SEO will largely be based on your goals. As SEO can take time to start showing results, it's best placed to help with long-term goals. PPC is instant, so once a campaign is live you can start receiving traffic to your website. SEO can take longer due to the number of tasks that need to be completed. A big factor in website rankings is having back links (links from other websites to yours). These are judged on the authority, relevance and trust of the website linking to yours. Links take time to build and require outreach to other website owners. This and other factors can mean that SEO takes longer to take effect. It also means that the effects can be long lasting after work has been done but ongoing updates and improvements will be needed to keep you on top.
PPC allows you to control and work with a much smaller budget. In your ad account you can set a daily budget as low as you can afford. Google will never spend over this budget within a 30 day period. With SEO, since you will most likely need to employ the skills of a specialist, you are effectively paying for someone's time. Some SEO tasks can take a lot of time so you can end up spending large sums to get the work done quickly or the tasks are spread over a longer period of time to keep cost down, but this will also slow results. PPC is instantaneous.
Both SEO and PPC require skill, experience and knowledge to be done well. You are also paying for that expertise.
PPC has some additional targeting you can use in order to make sure your ads are shown to the right people who are most likely to convert, like specific demographics or locations. You can, of course, make sure that you are choosing keywords that have a high level of intent behind them, such as “quote for new kitchen”. Keep in mind, the more intent and targeting, the more competitive and more expensive the click. With SEO, you are not able to drill down on the demographics of the people searching.
SEO and organic results fluctuate a lot. Google is always testing and updating their algorithms, which can mean fluctuation in visibility and ranking, as well as causing the amount of traffic coming to your website going up and down. New features in the search engine results page can also mean that organic results are pushed down, making them less visible. If you are using the right SEO tactic (white hat) and are not deliberately trying to play the system (known as black hat SEO) you should not be too negatively affected by algorithm updates.
PPC is more consistent but your position and cost per click can go up and down, a big factor in this will be competition.
PPC allows you to split-test. This can be landing pages, call to action, ads (copy and/or extensions). Use this data to tweak and make changes to your campaign for the best results.
Unlike PPC marketing, organic traffic doesn’t just stop as soon as you stop paying for it. Organic traffic can keep coming to the website long after an SEO has last worked on a website. This means that SEO can still pay off even when you have stopped paying. This will be time limited as the competition in your niche starts to catch up or overtake your previous efforts.
Where do the clicks in the search results go to?
According to some studies, as much as 80% of searchers ignore paid ads and only click on the organic results. This means that the majority of traffic and reward will come from SEO. The advantage of this for PPC is that your ad will still get shown but if it doesn’t get clicked you don’t have to pay.
If you wanted to achieve more clicks on PPC you would need to have very big budgets to take a big slice of the organic traffic pie.
What you pick will be based on your short-term and long-term goals.
A lot of customers we work with choose both: this allows them to start seeing instant results from PPC while building a long-term strategy and sustainability with SEO. Running both SEO and PPC means you can generate traffic no matter where the user decides to click.
You can also turn off your PPC once you start seeing an increase in your organic traffic which can help with budget and spend, but if they are both generating a return it makes sense to keep them both running.
If you need any help or advice optimising your website for SEO or PPC or are interested in running a Google Ads campaign for the first time, please get in touch.
