Both SEO and PPC are hugely important parts of digital marketing. They are both incredibly useful tools to build an audience and generate visitors to your site. In short, SEO is the organic way of gaining traffic on your site, whereas PPC relates to a paid promotion of your content. Today’s blog will tell you all you need to know about the key differences between SEO and PPC.
What is SEO?
SEO is ‘Search Engine Optimisation’, which refers to where your website is ranked on the search engine results page (SERP). There are various tools that you can use to improve your site’s SEO which should allow your website to appear at a higher level on the SERP. This is a key place to be on the search engine, as most people visit the first 3 websites that appear on the results page. Great SEO is highly reliant on producing good quality, relevant and frequent content for your website. In order to have good quality SEO on your website, you must use relevant keywords that relate to your content as well as common queries that users search. SEO is not an easy task, there’s no quick fix, but it is so worth it.
What is PPC?
PPC stands for ‘Pay Per Click’. This is an effective form of internet marketing whereby advertisers pay a fee each time their advert is clicked. Advertisers have the ability to bid on specific keywords so that when that word is included in a search query, it’s highly likely that their site will appear. Search engines such as Google often lower fees for advertisers if their website is genuinely satisfying the search query. Google AdWords is a great tool to use for PPC, as advertisers can compete for certain keywords. Google chooses its ‘winner’ by looking into a range of factors, including the quality of the site, the relevance of the keywords and the size of the bid placed. Using Google AdWords gives you access to its whole audience, which is obviously enormous.
What are the key differences between SEO and PPC?
As we mentioned earlier, SEO is often referred to as the organic way of gaining more traffic to your site. Good quality SEO is not free unless you know someone who knows exactly what they’re doing and is willing to dedicate a few hours a day to help you out. SEO is highly effective when it’s done properly, and it will 100% drive more traffic to your website. SEO is labelled as the more cost-effective way to increase traffic, it’s more of a long-term fix.
In comparison, PPC campaigns need to be planned out properly for them to be effective. You must ensure that the keywords that you bid on are selected carefully. PPC is a great way to drive traffic to your site quickly. PPC is a direct form of marketing because your advert can easily be placed in front of people who are genuinely interested in your business.
To conclude, both SEO and PPC are highly effective forms of marketing when they’re used correctly. If you’re just getting started, you should consider implementing both SEO and PPC. PPC helps to build fast traffic to your website, but your content should be written with SEO as a priority.
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