Why Organic SEO Traffic is the Best Source of Traffic
One of the most frequently asked
questions posed when setting up your online marketing campaigns, is: ‘which is
best - PPC campaigns or Organic SEO?’
Pros and Cons of both:
Pay Per Click
Pros:
Quick results- Once you’ve set up
your campaign/s, keywords and adverts; you will see immediate results and you
can tweak all aspects of your campaigns in seconds.
Promoting seasonal offers, such
as Christmas discounts on subscriptions/products etc. You can quickly and
easily set up a time-limited offer using your PPC accounts.
Results are shown about organic
SEO results plus you’ll find that most of your competitors are using PPC
campaigns so you may feel you want to join them and compete in the same
marketplace.
Cons:
Expense– Every time someone
clicks on your ad or text links, you
will be charged per click, no matter if they go on to make a purchase/send an
enquiry and depending on the price of the advert, this could prove quite costly
just to appear in the same space as your competitors and not actually increase
your revenue.
Perception of adverts – Users are
put off by what they view as the ‘hard sell’ when shown adverts on search
engines such as Google. According to a study done by Group M UK and Neilsen in
2012, users on average click on organic SEO results versus PPC results by a
margin of 94% to 6%!
Organic SEO
Cons:
It can take weeks or possibly
months to get results in the search engines. You’ll also have to invest time
working on not only the source code but also the content of your website. If
you don’t have an in-house programmer or developer that you can work with, you
might need to employ the services of an SEO agency to set you up initially.
Pros:
Cost effective and long-lasting
results – You may have to lay down an initial cost to get an SEO campaign set
up, but the overall long- term benefits
are undisputed. You’ll also not have to
spend the same amount of time checking your SEO words etc, as you will on PPC.
If implemented correctly, organic
SEO can block out your competitors over time. You may find that trying to bid
for certain keywords using PPC can cost a huge amount per click if you’re
trying to compete with a large company, and therefore miss out on those
particular words or ads, however you can still head up to the top of Google, if
SEO techniques are put in place correctly.
As seen above, if you rely purely
on PPC, you’re going to lose a very high proportion of potential visitors who
are put off by advertising. Get your SEO right, and you increase your
credibility of your company or brand and gain trust and credibility for new and
returning visitors.
Another aspect you might want to
bear in mind, is that by focusing on organic SEO, you have complete control
over what keywords you want to use and can tailor them to suit your particular
site or campaign you’re trying to promote. You won’t fall foul of having
campaigns or adverts ‘paused’ or rejected, and you won’t rattle through your
budget, sometimes in a matter of days, just for not having the right set of
keywords.
Don’t forget, you also need to
ensure that the content of your website is SEO friendly. Make sure you lay out
a set of keywords that can be inserted into each page (but be careful not to
write sloppy content that screams ‘SEO words!’) that tie in with your keywords
in the source code.
The long-term and cost effective
benefits far outweigh any Pay-per-click campaigns. Don’t forget to check your
analytics on a monthly basis and make necessary changes such as culling
keywords that are producing a very low click-through rate, and always make sure
that you have relevant and engaging content throughout.
