SEO vs. PPC: Understand, Compare, and Decide Which is Best for Your Brand

Online search is part of our daily life. Right? Can you imagine Google processes 3.5B+ searches every day? That’s 40,000 per second. As a business owner, how do you want to get your brand noticed in this ever-changing online world? If you want to dive deep, compare, and choose which is best for your brand, SEO vs. PPC, then you will enjoy this blog post. Similarly, you will explore organic and paid traffic insights where they fit within your overall marketing plan. 

SEO vs. PPC: Where to begin

Entrepreneurs and business owners often ask, "SEO vs. PPC, Which is better for my Brand?” This question is not easy, and you can not generalize this answer because it depends on a particular business case, including the current situation, objectives, and marketplace.

So, before deciding whether to do SEO, PPC, or both, you must develop a detailed, in-depth understanding of these two search marketing approaches.

Let's jump into the definition, features, advantages, and drawbacks of SEO and pay-per-click (PPC) to develop the perfect marketing strategy and include tips for selecting the right digital marketing channel for your business. Moreover, look at where organic and paid search results are suitable. And how to enable an integrated marketing approach with SEO and PPC for improved results from your search marketing efforts.

What is SEO?

Many SEO (Search Engine Optimization) experts have defined SEO as creating any website as a search engine friendly platform that ensures its visibility, ranking, and ability to earn organic traffic. Similarly, we say SEO is a set of activities that improves the user experience and ranking of the desired web pages in the organic search result.

For example, you often search on Google or Bing for any information, service, or product, such as where to get the best pizza, and your customers do the same in their daily life. So, if you invest your resources in SEO, the chances increase that your target audience finds your brand while they search with a relevant search term related to your product or service. In reality, 61% of marketers treat SEO as a top inbound marketing method for their business.

Tips to Get Started with SEO:

If you simply follow a few steps, it will help you improve your website's SEO score. So, to get started with your SEO practice following tips will guide you:

1. Ensure your website content is clear, concise, and helpful for the audience.
2. Make your topic simple, easy to understand, and reader-friendly.
3. Understand the user intent and use keywords relevant to your offerings in your web content.
4. Although it's a best practice to include keywords in your web copy, overuse of keywords is known as keyword stuffing. It may lead to Google treating your content as deceptive and downgrading your site.
5. Focus on users, what will be the easiest for them to navigate, and deliver the highest value.

Keep in mind that SEO boosts organic search ranking, and organic traffic is free. Similarly, optimizing your website for a search engine can significantly improve your SERP position over time. So, keep learning how a search engine works for organic results and increase your site's online visibility.

Here's an example of SEO in Practice.

In the screenshot below, Splurge Media appears at the top of Google's organic search results for the search term "marketing agency for small business in New Jersey." As a result of our SEO strategy, we have earned first place in the local search results.

However, the SERP outcome is not arbitrary. Each search engine considers various ranking factors to determine the sequential position of the desired actors that influence a web page's placement. So, your SEO strategy should create web pages and content aligning with the search engine ranking algorithms to get a higher position in the SERP.

Four Pillars of SEO:

1. Keyword Research

Understanding search intent is crucial in the keyword research process. So, understanding the words and phrases (keywords) your target audiences use when they are searching, and targeting those keywords on a specific page, is known as keyword research. SEO professionals often use keyword research tools like SEMRush’s Keywords Magic Tool to see monthly search volume, keywords difficulty, search intent, SERP features, and so on for particular keywords.

2. On-page SEO

When activities occur within the webpage to create high-quality, authentic, and helpful content that searchers are actively looking for on the web. Here you need to understand why users are typing the query. It is called search intent and works as the foundation of SEO activities.

For instance, when people search for "how to make a pizza," they intend to find a step-by-step tutorial on making a pizza in the search results as they want to learn it. Alternatively, someone searching for "best pizza delivery near me" wants to find a pizza delivery service for ordering the pizza. So, your content and user experience should match the searcher's intent.

On-page SEO Involves the Following Basic Steps:

1. Strategically placing targeted keywords in the content
2. Writing compelling Meta Titles, Meta Description, and Heading Tags
3. Creating short but meaningful URLs.
4. Optimizing image Alt Tags.

3. Off-page SEO

Off-page SEO is all about building your website's authority, and these activities happen outside your website. If you can build authority in your specific industry or niche, then Google will place your webpage higher on the search results.

You should build high-quality backlinks from authoritative websites to improve your website's authority. It plays a crucial role as backlinks act as votes from another website, and still, it is one of the top ranking factors of Google.

4. Technical SEO

You’ve completed keyword research, on-page and off-page SEO, but if a search engine can't find, crawl and index your website, you will have no results. This is critical for your SEO success because your website needs to be search engine friendly and technical error-free to earn ranking. Suppose we block the search bot from crawling this article in the robot.txt file; it will never crawl, index, or appear on the search results.

Besides Google, you will find many other search engines like Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, Yandex, Baidu, etc., but most SEO practices focus on Google. Google captured 92.47% of the search engine market share. So, Google's 200 ranking factors, content creation, backlink building, technical SEO, and relevant tactics are also worth learning to get a higher position on the SERP and earn free organic traffic.

Pros of SEO

Before investing in SEO, you should be clear about its benefits to your brand. So, let's discuss and understand some mentionable advantages of SEO vs. PPC that can increase organic traffic to your website.

1. SEO is Cost Effective in the Long Run.

Although we say SEO is free, it is not. Marketers don't need to pay directly to anyone for organic traffic. It does not mean it is free of cost. SEO requires time and money, such as payment to freelancers or digital marketing agencies, web services, SEO tools, reporting tools, and much more. Even if you must invest significant time and money in SEO, it is still cheaper than paid advertising (PPC)  in the long term.

So, getting a top ranking on the SERP increases the chances of driving huge organic traffic to your website, and you don't need to keep spending money for a single organic click. In contrast, you must pay for every click in the PPC campaign. Overall, organic traffic is scalable and cost-effective for a brand.

2. SEO Allows You to Target Different Levels of the Sales Funnel.

You can examine that your audiences do not belong to the same stage of the sales funnel. Some are just becoming aware of your brand at the top of the sales funnel. On the other hand, some are already at the bottom of the funnel, ready to place their order.

With a suitable SEO strategy, you can produce different types of content, such as blog posts, buying guides, case studies, and more which will meet the expectation of your audience at a different level of the sales funnel. Ultimately this enhances the users' experiences and boosts your website for getting visitors to the next stage of the sales funnel.

3. SEO or Organic Traffic is More Stable.

When your website ranks on Google, you should consistently optimize to receive free organic traffic. Remember, there is no instant on or off button for SEO traffic, which is the most exciting benefit of SEO. In a PPC campaign, if you pause or the budget crosses the limit, your search visibility will stop immediately. So, metaphorically, we can say SEO is similar to owning search traffic, whereas PPC is similar to renting traffic.

4. Organic Search Ranking Builds Brand Authority.

Your target audience will trust your brand, and your website will build authority if your product and services consistently appear in the search results for related keywords.

Similarly, if you comply with Google's latest update to search quality rating guidelines: E-E-A-T (which stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness), Google will signify your content and treat you as an expert on that domain. As a result, you will earn more backlinks from other high-authority websites, which is still one of the most valued ranking factors.

Cons of SEO

There are also some drawbacks to SEO. Let's understand and discuss some of the mentionable disadvantages of SEO that you need to consider before jumping in.

1. Search Engine Algorithms Rollout.

Search engines like Google continuously update their algorithms. Some updates roll out monthly, some take several months, and even some updates take place over a year. These algorithm updates have minor or major effects on your search engine appearance. So, you need to observe these changes closely and tailor your marketing strategy accordingly to get desired organic traffic.

2. Search Engine Optimization Never Ends.

SEO is not a one-time shot; when your website ranks for your targeted keywords for a certain period, that is not the end of the SEO game. If you want to keep that ranking position on the SERP over time, you'll have to continue optimization work for the content and the web pages. For example, you might write new fresh articles, update the old ones, add new links, or remove old or expired ones.

3. SEO Results Take Time.

SEO campaigns take at least 3 to 6 months to get the desired outcome, as you need to work on many important ranking factors. For example, a new website or domain will not enjoy instant organic traffic from your SEO activities. Moreover, SEO competitive Audit can be a handy tool for estimating time and effort to get the expected results. So, SEO pays off in the long run. Don’t expect your desired SEO results overnight.

4. SEO Requires High-level Skills and Expertise.

When not hiring an SEO professional, you should better understand your target audience's search intent, needs, and goals. Similarly, you need to meet your target audience's expectations with high-quality content and optimize your website to deliver an excellent user experience for search engine results.

As an entrepreneur or business owner, SEO activities are time-consuming and stressful to operate a business while performing technical SEO, content writing, web designing, link building, etc. However, if your budget permits, you can hire a freelancer or a digital marketing agency, like Splurge Media, to take your SEO campaign to the next level.  

How SEO Supports Your Business

SEO supports almost any business to get organic search traffic to their website. Similarly, there is no surprise that organic search is your website's most prominent source of traffic. How SEO supports a business depends on many factors, such as the business goals, nature, scope, business model, market competition, and much more.

For instance, if you run a local business like lawn care services, then local SEO strategy will be very helpful in driving qualified traffic, and potential leads for your business. Similarly, if you run an affiliate site, buying guides and product review-type content will drive affiliate sales and commission income more effectively.  

When Is It Best To Use SEO?

Let's go through some circumstances when SEO would be the most effective tactic for any online business.

1.     For Consistent Results.

SEO campaigns take a relatively long period to pay off. Because getting to the first page or top 10 results on the SERP does not usually happen overnight, or even within a week, you should consider that appearing on the top of the search results will take a significant amount of time. However, when your website ranks for certain keywords by doing SEO, you will enjoy continuous traffic as long as you keep doing your optimization activities. So, you will stay on top for a long time and enjoy the benefits of long-term organic traffic by running your SEO campaign with maintenance, improvement, and adjustment.

2.     To Build Website Authority.

It is not easy to build an authoritative website. You must develop an established resource center within a particular niche or industry to grow an authority website.

When a target audience of a specific niche needs relevant information, the website works as the "go-to" information hub. Once the website becomes popular, it will drive a lot of organic traffic based on the URL recall only.

If you can sustainably grow organic traffic to your pages, it will help your website build user trust and high authority backlinks (votes) from other reputed websites. Thus this is the best practice to establish a niche-specific authority website that becomes popular over time for its high-quality content and dominates the market share.

3.     To Increase the Website Value.

Websites are treated as virtual property, similar to real estate property. When your main goal is to sell your website for a premium price on the website flipping market, you must increase the value of your web property. Moreover, you need to consider various factors that directly and indirectly contribute to improving the value of a website. 

These factors include generated organic traffic, page rank, backlinks, referring domains, spam score, traffic consistency, change of search engine ranking in a specific time range, etc. All of these factors are crucial to building and maintaining an authoritative website. 

Remember, SEO is not free; producing and promoting high-quality content requires lots of time and tremendous hard work. So, you must assess the value properly to determine a realistic premium price for the market.

What is PPC?

PPC (Pay-Per-Click) is one of the most popular forms of Search Engine Advertising (SEA), where an advertiser pays the advertising platform (such as Google or Bing, or Facebook) for every click when someone makes a click on an online advertisement. So, this SEA model allows advertisers to pay only when users actively click on the ads. Similarly, Social Media ads also fall into this category of online paid advertising.

PPC ads will help you attract people actively searching for your products or services and interested in your offers. Moreover, you can target the audience at the bottom of the sales funnel and are often ready to convert. For example, when you search with keywords, you will see relevant ads first on the SERP marked as "sponsored" rather than organic search results. You should choose the ad settings, bid strategy, budgets, ad copy, and so on based on your PPC campaign goals and objectives. Moreover, you should align your PPC campaign goals and objectives with the overall marketing strategy.

Remember that the cost of PPC ads varies from industry to industry, your targeted keyword's search volume, and market competition.

Tips to Get Started with PPC:

Let's go through what Google PPC advertising typically involves:

1.  Keyword Research

Google PPC ads start with keyword research, and you should choose a group of similar keywords to the target audience of a particular ad group. Similar to SEO, the search intent of keywords plays a crucial role in a PPC campaign. So, you need to identify commercial, transactional, and navigational search intent to maximize the conversion rate by targeting the bottom of sales funnel traffic.

2. Budget and Bid Strategy

You should select your bid for the ads auction at the bid setting level. This is a critical decision for an advertiser because you must decide on the bid, which means how much money you are willing to pay Google ads platform for an ad click. Remember, if your competitors outperform your bid, your ads will not appear on the Google SERP. So, your ads will get fewer clicks or no clicks at all.

3. Ad Creation

Ad creation involves writing compelling ad copy, adding CTAs (call to action), displaying URLs, destination URLs, ad extensions, and so on. For example, when users' search intent aligns with the ad copy, they will likely click on it and arrive at the landing page to take the desired action.

For example, if you search on Google with the query "digital marketing agency," you will see ads at the top of the Google search results page marked as "sponsored," When you click any ads, it will take you to the landing page.

After gathering enough data, Google will assign your published ads a Quality Score (QS). This QS indicates how relevant and useful your ads are to the audience and what user experience your ad copy and landing page serves. Usually, with higher Quality Scores, your ads will appear more often on the search results, and you need to pay less than other competitors for each click.

4. Audience Targeting

Audience targeting is very important to set up a PPC ads campaign that should decide who will use your ads on the SERP. It gives a power of control to the advertiser where you can target the audience based on who they are, where they are, what they are interested in, and so on. For example, you can target an audience based on their current location, such as New Jersey, and your ads will only be shown to those currently in that area.

Pros of PPC

PPC is one of the most popular modes of paid advertising, also known as search engine advertising. You can ask, why is PPC so popular with the advertiser? To answer the question, let's discuss and understand some remarkable advantages of PPC below.

1.  PPC Offers Instant Results.

When you spend your money on a PPC campaign, you will see immediate results from your ads just after a few hours of starting the Campaign. On the other hand, your SEO campaign can take months to see the expected results from its investment. So, PPC has become popular among advertisers for its instant outcomes.

2.  PPC Ads Appear Above Organic Results.

PPC ads are always displayed on the top of the search results page for your targeted keywords, allowing you to show your website links above the organic search results. Interestingly, many average web users don't know about it and can't distinguish between paid and organic search results. So, your audience notices your website link first and clicks it before scrolling down the search results page.

3.  PPC Allows Better Audience Targeting.

Audience targeting is one of the greatest advantages of any PPC campaign. While you set up a PPC campaign, you can select different audience segments for targeting. So, you can target people based on their demographic and psychographic data, such as a specific geographic area, age group, income group, marital status, interest, behavior, and many more.   

4.  A/B Testing on PPC Ads is Easy and Fast.

Running an A/B test is crucial for online advertising. You can create two ads versions and run them simultaneously to measure performance and identify better converting ads. You have to make variations between two ads by changing some ad elements, such as the ad copy (headline and description), and enabling them to run to their relative performance for a while. After observing their performance, you can pause one ad or continue the optimization process for better results.  

Cons of PPC

If you don't have proper knowledge, skills, and experience, don't go for PPC; otherwise, it will be like gambling. Consequently, you will lose your ad budget for nothing. Let's understand and discuss the worth mentionable drawbacks of PPC before spending your money on it:

1.  PPC Ads are Costly.

Without spending money for a PPC campaign, your ads will not run for a second. There is no exception that you must pay for each ad when visitors click on it, and when your ad budget is finished, your traffic will stop immediately.

When you run ads in a highly competitive industry such as legal or insurance, you will face the Cost Per Click (CPC) of a PPC ad can be very high, like $40.  

2.  Paid Ads Lowers Profit Margins.

Although there is no significant price hike for your products and services, your Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) can keep going higher. As a result, a PPC campaign might be profitable in the short term, ultimately resulting in lower profit margins in the long run.

3.  PPC Ads Become Stale Over Time.

Remember that you have limited control over your PPC ads Campaign because ad platforms like Google set all the rules, regulations, and terms of service. For instance, only the highest bid for your ad does not ensure that your ad will appear on the search results page. Similarly, you must follow certain guidelines to get your ad approved by the platform.

How PPC Works for Your Businesses

Pay Per Click ads allows the advertiser to show their advertising on the search results page of search engines like Google or Bing to drive targeted search traffic to their website's landing page by paying money.

For example, Google search results for "pet sitting and dog walking services."

In the above screenshot of the search engine results page, you will have a chance to get even top organic search results if you can optimize your PPC ads properly, which can lead to highly targeted traffic, qualified leads, and a better conversion rate. So, using PPC search advertising, you can have a better ROI for your business.

When Is It Appropriate To Use PPC?

Do you need to understand when to use PPC advertising to grow your business? Let's go through some circumstances below when PPC would benefit your online business more.

1.     For Immediate Results.

PPC is the best choice to drive fast results. When Google approves your PPC campaign, and your bids are high enough to overcome the competition to ensure priority placement, you will instantly appear for many targeted audiences. So, your PPC campaign allows you to get instant traffic.

When you want to run campaigns for a new product launch, squeeze pages, CPA marketing or affiliate marketing, seasonal promotion, event-focused marketing, online shop and more, PPC campaigns work amazingly to get instant traffic.

2.     For Highly Targeted Traffic.

You will have control over the PPC marketing audience to narrow your potential customers based on their demographic data. Similarly, many PPC platforms, such as social media sites, allow you to filter target audiences based on age group, gender, income level, education level, marital status, and even interest in showing your ad. So, you can run highly targeted ads using PPC advertising platforms.

3.     To Promote a Time-sensitive Offer.

In marketing communication like advertising, urgency plays a crucial role in pursuing the desired action by the target audience. For instance, when you see an ad for an event happening soon on a particular date, most likely, you will see a countdown timer asking you to book your place earlier. Similarly, if you plan to run ads with an expiration date for products, services, or events, a PPC campaign would be appropriate for these time-sensitive offers as it can drive immediate results.

4.     When SEO is not Feasible.

If you plan SEO, you need regularly updated and optimized content-rich websites to get a higher rank on the search engine result page. However, there are some websites not designed for SEO purposes. For instance, squeeze pages are not created with high-quality content and are optimized for SEO purposes. So, PPC campaigns would be a great option for these websites to drive traffic from paid advertising.

5.     To Dominate Search Market for Target Keywords.

PPC ads are displayed above the organic search results on the SERP. Searchers often do not bother to scroll down the search results page, so it’s no surprise that 50% of search traffic clicks on the top 3 sponsored links. If you do not bid for those clicks, you will fall behind your competitors and miss the chance to maximize your click-share for keywords you target for your business. So, you should invest in PPC ads.  

SEO or PPC: Which is Better for Your Business?

You should consider two key differences when choosing SEO or PPC. Firstly, paid ads appear at the top of the page, even above the organic search results from SEO. Secondly, the organic traffic as a result of SEO is free, but traffic from PPC is not free, and you need to pay for every click.  

So which is a better option for your business, SEO or PPC? A quick answer to this question is that it depends on the situation in which you run your business.

Every business has a unique situation, and based on the conditions, SEO can be better than PPC and the other way around.

Let's go through some situations where SEO works better than PPC.

Go for an SEO campaign if:

1. Your company has a low marketing budget.
2. You plan to build your brand authority in a particular niche or industry.
3. Your goal is to maximize return on investment (ROI) in the long run.
4. You plan to create content targeting audiences at different sales funnel levels.
5. Check out the following situations where PPC would bring better results than SEO

Go for a PPC campaign if:

1. Your business requires quick results for search traffic.
2. You plan to launch novel products or innovative products launched for the first time in the market.
3. You offer a time-sensitive product or service, such as Black Friday Sales.
4. You want to take your audience to a product page or landing page.

SEO and PPC: The Benefits of Running SEO and PPC in an Integrated Approach

Earlier in this article, we reviewed the pros and cons of SEO and PPC. Moreover, we now understand that they yield the best results when they support each other and synergize. If you can manage to run SEO and PPC campaigns together, you will have far better results than choosing either.

Check out The benefits of running SEO and PPC together:

1. The organic search takes a long time, so you can get keyword and conversion data from PPC as it shows immediate results.
2. Targeting high-performing keywords in PPC and SEO would increase the total traffic volume.
3. Moving high-volume or low-converting (important) keywords and high-cost keywords targeting from paid to organic traffic would be a cost-effective approach.
4. Insights from ad copy and landing pages A/B testing data can be utilized for your organic listing and landing page optimization.
5. Remarketing in paid advertising is a fantastic tool that allows you to show ads when visitors leave your website after an initial touch point using organic search and show customized ad copy to engage the audience on another site. It helps the audience to recall your ads around the web.
6. Another cool benefit is that you can experiment with your keyword strategy in PPC ads and take the successful strategy to a long-term SEO campaign.
7. With an integrated approach, you can target the audience at all stages of the sales funnel or customer buying journey from awareness, interest and evaluation, desire, and finally, to action with different keywords search intent.
8. You can gain users' trust and build authority by securing strong visibility on paid and organic search results.

In our experience with over a hundred Digital Marketing projects, an integrated search marketing strategy focusing on SEO and PPC would have optimal results from search traffic. A business should develop a holistic search engine marketing strategy rather than focusing on SEO or PPC separately.

SEO vs. PPC: Statistics

SEO Statistics

Here are some useful SEO statistics taken from Hubspot Blog:

1. Google alone generates over 92.47% of web traffic globally.
2. Content quality matters because 90.63% of web content receives no traffic from Google search, and only 0.21% receives over 1000 monthly visits.
3. In 2020, 35.18% of web-based Google organic searches got a link click.
4. The percentage of 99.2 website pages has less than 100 backlinks.
5. Over 5.6 billion searches every day, or 2 trillion searches yearly are processed by Google.
6. SEO gets 64% of active investment by marketers.

PPC Statistics

Let's go through some remarkable PPC statistics below taken from Hubspot Blog:

1. Globally 90% of internet users can be reached by Google Display Network.
2. The spending on Search advertising was $58 billion in 2020, but in 2021 it increased to $144.8 billion.
3. In Google Ads, the maximum average monthly cost-per-click (CPC) is $18.57/Click in the insurance industry.
4. In the electronics industry, the minimum CPC at 77 cents/click in Google Ads.
5. Across all industries, the average Facebook Ads Click-Through Rate (CTR) is 1.1%.

Frequently Asked Questions for SEO Vs. PPC:

1.  How is Ranking Different When Comparing PPC vs. SEO?

SEO results are organic, and there are 200 ranking factors that determine the SEO ranking, such as high-quality content, metadata optimization, targeting relevant keywords, solving technical issues, backlinks, and many more. On the other hand, PPC ads appear as "sponsored" at the top of search engines above organic results. Paid ads rank depends on keyword relevancy, enough budget, and an appropriate landing page that provides a better user experience.

2.  How Does PPC Affect SEO?

If you use PPC ads, it will help you to discover untapped and important keywords for your particular niche or industry. It also helps you dominate the search results if you organically earn top ranks, increasing the click share.

3.  Is PPC Better Than SEO?

PPC and SEO each have their advantages and disadvantages. So, neither PPC nor SEO can be better than the other because they are two different search marketing approaches. However, there are many case studies on these approaches, and we can say they bring the best results when they work together.

4.  What is the Key Difference Between SEO and PPC?

The major difference between PPC and SEO is the cost of running these two search marketing approaches. The organic traffic from SEO is free, whereas you have to pay to show your PPC ads in the search results.  

5.  Why do SEO and Paid Search Matter?

Both Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Paid Search (PPC) are two types of Search Engine Marketing (SEM), and they work in different ways to get search traffic. It’s no surprise that 93% of online user experiences begin with a search. For this reason, marketers want to show their brands either way. However, showing your brand in both ways will gain our trust and build authority in your particular niche or industry.

Final Thoughts

Whether you choose SEO, PPC, or both, ultimately depends on your business goals. So, evaluate the pros and cons of SEO and PPC to see which best fits your digital marketing strategy. For instance, if you want to gain leads quickly, then PPC advertising is an ideal choice. Alternatively, if you want to improve your online presence long-term, perhaps SEO is the better option.

I believe that both SEO and PPC are crucial and complementary parts of an online marketing strategy. However, the choice is yours. If you need an expert opinion, contact Splurge Media, a trusted digital marketing company in New Jersey, to learn more about SEO and PPC advertising.