SEO vs. PPC: Which is Better? [Pros, Cons, & Use Cases]

SEO vs. PPC: Quick look

• Search engine optimization (SEO) and pay per click advertising (PPC) are valuable digital marketing strategies to reach your customers and drive them to your website or landing page, where they can convert or purchase from you.
• If you’re looking for a cost-effective, long-term growth strategy, SEO is the better choice.
• If you need immediate results like leads and sales, PPC can get the job done.
• Ideally, though, your company will use both strategies together.

Choosing between SEO and PPC to grow your business is like the cardio vs. strength training dilemma of gym goers who want to stay fit. Both choices are necessary to reach the goal.

However, your business may have pressing needs or larger goals, so you may need to prioritize one over the other. Let’s uncover when you must use SEO or PPC, and why implementing both strategies is the best choice through these topics:

• Your SEO vs. PPC cheat sheet
• SEO vs. PPC: How to choose the right strategy for your business
• SEO: Your strategy for sustainable growth
• PPC: Your strategy for immediate results
• The power of two: Combining SEO and PPC
• FAQs

Your SEO vs. PPC cheat sheet

While SEO and PPC both play key roles in growing your business, you may need to prioritize one over the other, depending on your goals, resources, and the industry or competitive landscape.

For a quick breakdown of SEO vs. PPC, you can refer to this infographic:

SEO vs. PPC: How to choose the right strategy for your business [checklist]

While the ideal strategy is integrating both SEO and PPC, every organization’s specific situation, goals, and resources are unique. Your current situation and priorities may call for either an SEO-first or PPC-first approach.

Not quite sure which channel to choose? Let our checklist guide you.

Check all the items that apply to your current situation. If you ticked more SEO boxes, prioritize SEO.

Got more PPC items checked? Focus your efforts on PPC first. If you have an equal mix, consider a combined approach if your resources allow it.

SEO: Your strategy for sustainable growth

SEO is the process of getting traffic from the “free” or “natural” listings on search engines, such as Google or Bing.

SEO is like a marathon, where it takes a lot of time to see the results of your hard work. Your website is modified or improved to help it appear higher in the organic listings.

The pros of SEO

Here are the advantages of SEO for your business:

• SEO is free: While this strategy still comes with an initial investment cost, SEO is technically free. You don’t need to spend to drive users to your site — they organically discover your page when they search online.
• SEO delivers long-term benefits: Once all the SEO best practices are implemented — like creating quality content — the results will outlast your efforts. The ROI for SEO will continue to climb long after PPC has peaked. That means your site will continue attracting customers indefinitely.
• SEO drives relevant, targeted traffic: SEO allows for the use of long-tail keywords, which are three to five-word phrases that refine a search term to be more targeted. With long-tail keywords comes more relevant traffic.
• SEO encourages a user-friendly website: With advanced SEO, you earn visitors by constantly optimizing your site to improve your content and the user experience. It may take a lot of work, but it’s a good thing in the long run.

The cons of SEO

SEO is an excellent strategy, but it does have its own disadvantages. Here are its cons:

• SEO faces ever-changing Google algorithms: A top complaint about SEO is that all the optimization work you put into your site could be affected completely when Google releases new algorithm changes (which they do, at a rate of about 1.2 changes per day).
• SEO requires ongoing maintenance: Keyword research, content updates, link building, and more are all factors of SEO that need to be regularly monitored and updated for your site to maintain rankings or to increase them.
• Results from SEO take time: Compared to the instantaneous results of PPC, when you’re comparing SEO vs. PPC, the time lag with SEO can be a downfall. It can take anywhere from three to six months to see an increase in rankings or traffic. This also depends on how much optimization is needed for your site to even be ready to launch.

When you must prioritize SEO

Given the benefits and limitations of SEO, this digital marketing channel is an excellent choice if:

• You are building your brand authority and credibility in the long run: SEO involves creating helpful content, which helps you rank in search engine results pages (SERPs) and establish your authority in your niche. As your audience sees more of your pages appear in their searches, they’ll see you as a credible source and business they can trust.
• You want to consistently generate cost-effective leads over time: While SEO may not give you instant results like increased site visits and leads overnight, it can drive steady growth. You’ll eventually see the site visits grow and your leads consistently come in.
• You want to engage your audience with a sustainable content marketing strategy: SEO is an excellent strategy to nurture your relationships with your prospects. Engage them with various types of content — from blog posts and original research to interactive content like calculators and checklists.
• You want to compete in a sector where ad costs are high: If ad costs in your industry are beyond your budget and extremely high because of the competition, you can implement SEO instead. Results from SEO may take time, but they compound over time as you continue your cost-effective SEO efforts.
• You are in a less competitive industry or local market: Because the search volume is typically low for these sectors, it’s easier to rank for relevant search queries, making SEO the more cost-effective and sustainable option.

PPC: Your strategy to get immediate results

PPC advertising allows you to display ads in the sponsored results section of a search engine’s results page. When that ad is clicked, you are charged a fee.

If you want immediate clicks to your website, PPC is a much shorter race — more like a short sprint — because you can immediately start appearing on the first page of results.

The pros of PPC

Here are the benefits of using PPC:

• PPC offers maximum visibility in search results: PPC ads are typically placed above the regular search results, so users will see you before your competitors. With PPC, you don’t have to wait for months to get a prominent spot in SERPs.
• PPC delivers immediate results: If you are first launching a website or even a brand-new company, you want to get your new site or name out there as soon as possible. PPC works a lot faster in the short race of SEO vs. PPC. It is also beneficial if you have special promotions or events that need exposure and cannot be planned months in advance.
• PPC offers complete control: With PPC ads, you have control over which page the “clicker” is sent to. By having control over the landing page, you ensure that the visitor sees the most relevant information to what your ad was displaying.
• PPC provides flexibility: You can choose which keywords you want to bid higher on, how much you want to spend in a day, and even pause your campaign if you are running low on your budget. You can also set the placement of your ads and the location where you want your ad to be shown.

The cons of PPC

PPC comes with some drawbacks, too. Here they are:

• PPC requires constant investment: Once the money stops, the ads stop. While you may gain some branded traffic down the road, that unbranded search traffic will completely disappear when the ads stop running.
• PPC costs add up: Even though you can control your PPC campaign budget, costs can pile up and you may end up spending more money than you originally planned. Traffic to your site with PPC completely depends on the money you pour into it. If the keywords you are targeting become highly competitive, they may become expensive and can drain your budget quickly.
• PPC comes with a learning curve: PPC is difficult for a lot of businesses to start because platforms like Google Ads are somewhat complicated. It takes a lot of research and practice to nail down a practical PPC campaign for any business, especially when you’re brand new to it.

When you must prioritize PPC

Now that you know its advantages and disadvantages, let’s dive into when it’s best to prioritize PPC over SEO:

• You’re launching a new product or service: For maximum impact, you can prioritize your PPC efforts when you’re introducing a new product or service. That way, you can immediately drive qualified traffic to your site and generate leads!
• You’re promoting time-sensitive or seasonal offers: Run PPC campaigns when you need to promote limited-time offers to generate traffic and leads within your promotion period.
• You need immediate site traffic, leads, or sales within a month: Businesses may need instant visibility or sales for various reasons, such as events, cash flow emergencies, crisis management, or market competition. PPC can come in handy to drive their desired traffic and new sales.
• You’re a newcomer competing in a saturated market: If you’re a new industry player competing against established brand names with years of SEO authority, ranking organically will be an uphill climb. Use PPC to accelerate your growth. PPC lets your brand appear alongside these competitors in the search results.
• You’re a local business that wants to be visible for “near me” searches: Local searches typically show map results and ads on top of organic results. If you want your business to get a prominent spot on these local search results, run PPC campaigns for relevant local searches.

The power of two: Combining SEO and PPC

SEO and PPC both offer unique advantages to your business. Combining these strategies lets you create a sustainable, long-term strategy for growth while capturing immediate leads and sales.

3 benefits of a blended SEO and PPC strategy

Once your budget and time resources allow, consider blending both strategies to reap these benefits:

• Sustainability of organic search and the backup of PPC: SEO provides a steady flow of traffic and leads to your site, while PPC acts like your backup stream when your traffic fluctuates due to algorithm changes.
• Gathering insights from PPC to inform your SEO strategy: When you run PPC campaigns, you get insights on which keywords and messages effectively convert your audience. Use these insights to improve your SEO strategies.
• Effective nurturing and retargeting: When combining SEO and PPC, you’re improving your conversion opportunities. Together, they create more opportunities for you to reach your audience and nurture them. PPC is also an excellent strategy to retarget users who’ve previously engaged with your site.

4 ways to integrate SEO and PPC

SEO and PPC can coexist in your strategy. Here are some ways you can integrate these two:

1. Promote organic content with PPC: Use PPC to boost your organic content’s reach. You don’t have to promote every blog post. Choose key pages that your audience will really find helpful, like original research or a page with a downloadable guide.
2. Analyze your PPC campaign’s data to fuel your SEO strategy: Use your PPC campaign data to understand how your audience engaged with the page and your site and whether they converted. Use these insights to inform your SEO strategy.
3. Retarget your organic site visitors with PPC: Deliver ads to users who’ve previously interacted with your website. Retarget audiences who’ve visited certain pages or followed a sequence of visiting a product page and then lead form. It’s an excellent way to re-engage and nurture them into conversion.
4. Publish organic content related to your competitor’s PPC keywords: Your competitors are likely running PPC campaigns on their most important searches. You can also run ads for these terms, but you can also create organic content.

FAQs

Let’s answer your other SEO vs. PPC questions here:

Beyond SEO vs. PPC: Your next steps toward bottom-line growth

You can benefit from implementing both SEO and PPC strategies, instead of picking one over the other.

SEO is a long-term strategy that helps you establish your brand authority. It’s a sustainable way to engage with your audience and generate leads.

On the other hand, PPC offers maximum visibility and delivers immediate results. If you’re launching a new product or competing in a highly saturated market, PPC is an excellent strategy to stand out and get instant results.

If you want to maximize results from both strategies, consider partnering with experts. WebFX is a full-service digital marketing agency that offers SEO and PPC, along with other services.

We’ve driven over 1,312,500 page 1 rankings on Google for our clients and generated $28M in revenue for our clients through their PPC campaigns.

Let’s work together so you can grow your bottom line through SEO and PPC. Call us at 888-601-5359 or contact us online to speak with a strategist about how you can get a tailored SEO and PPC strategy for your company!