subject: MAKING A CHOICE BETWEEN ORGANIC SEO AND PAY-PER-CLICK [print this page] MAKING A CHOICE BETWEEN ORGANIC SEO AND PAY-PER-CLICK
What works best for you can be figured out by analyzing and comparing the two disciplines and then focusing on the approach you want to have for your targeted goals.
Let's quickly review the brighter and darker sides of SEO and PPC both.
Organic SEO will fetch you ROI (return of investment) for a longer period. This is because you are spending for your advertising campaign once and you get higher listings with the work done across the campaign even after it is over. Moreover, in organic SEO, the longevity of back links work for you with a certain level of optimization achieved even if your site has not been worked upon since long.Therefore, you may still have a higher rank even if no work is done for days together.BUT THEN, the results take a longer time to come, probably many months, and the result is not guaranteed. Secondly, the initial budget for an SEO campaign can be more massive than that of a PPC campaign.
PPC, on the other hand, will generate traffic on your site in no time. You may want to put this kind of marketing to use if you want results in relatively short term. This can also help a down sloping business where instant rush can turn the tide. HOWEVER, the results plummet as soon as the campaign is over. Also, you need to work on conversion optimization for improving ROI as you will be paying for every single click.
Big businesses with high advertising budgets can run both the campaigns simultaneously and successfully. For a small business, first it would be imperative to research whether their website fulfills what it takes to initiate keyword optimization for SEO and later on managing it. Lack of unique or uncommon keywords relevant to your business will take more efforts and time by an SEO campaign and hence will keep you waiting for the results. You may instead choose a PPC campaign with your initial budget so that at least you don't have to wait to get attention, and gradually when there's enough of exposure that you've got through your sponsored link, you may think of splitting your budget to include an organic SEO campaign parallel to it. At no point, you should stop observing your PPC investment and profit ratio. Once SEO starts yielding good results for you, you may choose to put a check on your PPC budget diverting it to your SEO as this is where your long-term benefit lies. How and when you change your budget ratio, however, should depend on the performance of these two interwoven strategies both in their individual role towards achieving the goal and in relation to each other.
