SEO vs. PPC
There are always people in the digital marketing world that like to debate which channel is the best, SEO or PPC. Although this question is very complex and could be split up into sub sections (better for what?), I have come up with a list of 10 reasons why SEO is better than PPC. Now this is not an official opinion on which is better. Both are good for different things, however, if I had to defend SEO this would be my reasoning…
10. SEO is not advertising- Two thirds of Americans object to online tracking. (See Article Here) It is safe to assume that same 2/3 would also object to that information being used to better serve online ads. SEO is not seen as advertising but rather an organic result to a search. PPC is seen as exactly what it is, advertising. While this could be a benefit if the user is far enough along in the buying cycle, in general it is not.
9. SEO has more credibility- This goes along with #10 somewhat. Google prides and markets themselves as the company that delivers the most useful and relevant results to users. As a by product of this, sites appearing in Google’s organic listing are going to receive an inherit credibility that. In PPC, this credibility is only given to those advertisers with strong brands.
8. SEO has viral potential- There are numerous examples of viral campaigns that catch fire and usually deliver awareness and high amounts of traffic, not to mention links. Link bait is a popular strategy used in SEO. Part of the benefit to create and distribute link bait is because of its viral potential. PPC for the most part, does not have the chance to spread virally. Some PPC campaigns may land users on a unique or interesting page which could be turned into link bait, however PPC is not going to have the same promotional effects on that page when compared to SEO.
7. SEO requires good site structure and organization- PPC lands users on one specific page, usually with an offer or lead form of some kind depending on the goal of the campaign. SEO requires the entire site, not just page, be optimized and user friendly. Large companies such as Home Depot who run a ton of PPC campaigns, usually have awful sites from a search engine perspective. This is because PPC doesn’t have any requirements in order to rank, i.e you pay for the placement. Some people might argue that PPC landers need to be user friendly, have certain elements, be A/B tested, etc…which is true. This does not mean, however, that SEO landing pages are not user friendly. Google is constantly trying to force SEO’s to make user friendly pages through various changes to ranking factors within the Google algorithm.
6. SEO makes the user experience better- Ever notice how when you click on a PPC ad the only thing you can do on the page is fill out a lead form? This is because a lot of PPC campaigns send users to a single page with a single offer. SEO lands users on a page within a site, complete with relevant internal links and information. Maybe the user wants to read more information. With PPC they have to click back to Google and then do a search for the product or company they saw on the PPC lander. With SEO they can easily click to any part of the site, explore the product, the company etc…Sure there are good PPC campaigns which also land users on pages with relevant information and internal links. Unfortunately, those campaigns are currently the minority.
SEO vs PPC Long Term
5. SEO is long term- SEO delivers lasting, long term benefits. PPC is sort of like paid link building…Once you stop paying, your results disappear. It cannot be overlooked, however, that PPC has certain long term benefits: the longer you run your campaign and the more history you have, the lower CPC you’ll be paying. Either way SEO delivers long term benefits that PPC does not.
4. SEO is more complex- Some of you may be thinking, isn’t complexity a bad thing? Let me explain. It is harder to track what factors cause one site to rank vs another because there are a multitude of factors which go into the organic rankings. The key here is that it is harder for competitors to reverse engineer your strategies. With PPC your looking a a limited number of factors such as bid and quality score. There are a million tools to see exactly which words your competitors are buying, what ad copy they are running, where they are landing users, and even what they are bidding! With SEO, because influential factors are less transparent and harder to track, it is harder for competitors to copy your strategy. It is important to point out that there are also tools available to see almost anything you want about a competitors SEO campaign. The difference is that because it is so much more complex and time consuming, competitors are less likely to research and implement your strategy. Let’s also not forget that the complexities of SEO are part of what makes it fun!
3. SEO results are more relevant- 72.3% of Google users and 60.8% of Yahoo users find natural search results to be the most relevant to their searches (Source Here). Relevancy is key. If you rank (SEO or PPC) for irrelevant search terms, you will have an extremely low click through rate and an abysmal conversion rate. Google and Bing are currently in a branding war to be the search engine which provides the most relevant results. Bing’s current slogan is that they are the “cure for search overload syndrome”. The search engines naturally make SEO better than PPC for relevance using various ranking factors.
2. SEO drives more traffic- 75% of users click on organic rankings as opposed to paid listings. In theory on a single keyword search, organic rankings drive 300% more traffic than PPC. That’s just from the search engines alone. In addition, SEO provides traffic from a variety of sources. One link in one article might be picked up by 5 other sites who will send traffic via the included link. I will point out that PPC delivers much more qualified traffic. This alone is a heavily debated topic- is it better to have a large quantity of unqualified traffic or a lower volume of qualified traffic? It all depends on the goals of the campaign.
1. SEO is free- OK, OK, it’s not technically free. Sure there is the time you put in, paid links you buy, agency fees, etc…It is free in the sense that you do not pay Google one cent for the traffic they send you. In addition your ROI (ROAS) is significantly higher with SEO when compared to PPC. This is, of course, time sensitive. ROI for an SEO campaign is going to be very low during the beginning stages and higher in the long term.
Remember, I am not in any way saying SEO is better than PPC. They are both good at doing different things. For example PPC is great for quickly testing multiple offers, landing pages, on page elements, etc…It is also great for easily determining the point of entry to your website. Finally, search engines treat you like a valued partner. I can’t begin to illustrate how well the media teams on big name PPC accounts are treated by the the major engines vs how SEO’s are treated.
Have an opinion on this post? Want to defend PPC or bring up additional info? Please post your comments or feel free to email me at webmaster@seolair.com.
Related posts:
- What Is Organic SEO
- Google Caffeine: Speed Now For Rankings Tomorrow
- Showing Success Outside Of Core SEO Metrics
- Key SEO News From Pubcon Las Vegas
To see synergies between SEO and PPC, check out this post over at iCrossing:
http://connect.icrossing.co.uk/top-10-reasons-ppc-seo-synergy_1247
Comparing SEO and PPC is like comparing apples and oranges. I personally like to eat both, so why would I wates time arguing that one is better than the other? Each has particular situations where it makes more sense to use it over the other. If companies don’t recognize that, or worse, get caught up in thinking one is superior, then their marketing campaigns suffer.
I agree with you. Seo of course more effective than ppc. It needs also zero or minimal cost.
Both they are very necessary and they must go in line together like part of a marketing strategy. At the outset he is recommendable to use PPC to obtain immediate results, while the positioning in finders works.
You have pointed out some interesting Pay per click tips that my friends and I were discussing, relieved I ran into it, so thank you for that.