Often during business meetings, questions regarding SEO or Pay per Click arise in regards to which is the more effective traffic driver when developing a web strategy. The answer, however, is not always black and white.
So, instead of providing an absolute for our clients, we outline for them the various components of each in order to suss out which strategy will work best for their company’s specific needs. Below are some factors we ask them to consider:
Geotargeting
One of the main benefits of Pay per Click, or PPC, is that you can target any geographical areas you want, such as Miami or the South Florida area on a whole. SEO doesn’t allow you to do this. The key to geotargeting is really figuring out what geographic area your business targets. If you go outside of your target area you risk increased competition from other websites. Conversely, if your target area is too narrow, you may exclude potential customers in your service area. By using this formula: location + product (or service).com to determine what domain name to buy for your website, you have a head start on getting your business to show up in organic search results for associated searches.
Cost and Timeframe
While the ROI on SEO is not as immediate as geotargeting – it takes somewhere between 4 and 12 months for a website to make it to the top of Google with great SEO – the resulting ROI is much higher than PPC ultimately. The ROI of PPC is normally better than the ROI of SEO for the first few months, but once you get to the first page of Google organically, you’re going to get a lot of free, qualified traffic, making the ROI of SEO much higher than that of PPC. Because organic listings get approximately 85% of the clicks and paid listings get only 15%, you can get a lot more traffic from SEO, but it also takes longer to get that traffic.
Landing Page Control
A benefit of PPC is that you can send people to any landing page you want. With SEO you have some control over what pages you optimize for each keyword, but at the end of the day, Google can feature other pages on your site instead. With PPC you tell Google where you want your
Tests, Events and Special Offers
The main benefit of PPC is that you can run limited-time campaigns. If you have an event you want to promote, PPC is the way to do it. (ie: if your company is offering a holiday special on your products).
Industry-Specific Criteria
There are some industries where PPC clicks are over $50 and the competition for organic rankings is not that high. And there are industries where organic rankings are really competitive and PPC prices are really low. To find out how much you can expect to pay for clicks in your industry, use Google’s Traffic Estimator.
