- There are many differences between PPC and SEO including the overall focus and strategies used.
- Some similarities between SEO and PPC include the target audiences and overall goal.
- Boiling Point Media helps businesses get and maintain traffic to their site while prioritizing keywords, and focusing on ever-changing search engine algorithms.
In an increasingly digital world, marketing your business and brand has never been more complicated. With so many different strategies to use within a marketing campaign, it can be overwhelming and frustrating. Especially if you’re not seeing the results you’re wanting. One of the most important advertising strategies to include in your practice is SEM (search engine marketing) SEM is split up into two pillars: SEO and PPC. To have a successful marketing campaign, both of these strategies are necessary. But what are the similarities and differences between SEO and PPC?
What Is SEO?
Before we learn the similarities and differences between SEO and PPC, let’s start with learning about what SEO is, and what it does for businesses. SEO (Search Engine Optimization), is the process of improving how high your website ranks on search engines, organically. There are a few different types of SEO, on-page, off-page and technical SEO. On-page includes optimizing things that viewers can directly see, like content updates. While off-page SEO entails things like building website authority by posting links on social media. Technical SEO includes optimizations that aren’t necessarily seen by the viewer. Examples of this include adding schema, accessibility solutions, and the creation of robots.txt files.
The Importance Of SEO In Advertising
SEO focuses on achieving organic traffic through search engines when people are searching for different things. This increases your website’s visibility, that goes with your brand recognition, and builds trust with consumers. Since search engines are constantly updating, it is important to stay up to date with what will remain effective as well as what will continue to drive traffic to your page.
What Is PPC?
Next we will move on to explaining more about what PPC is. To put it simply, PPC (Pay Per Click), is advertising that businesses pay for to show up when a person searches for a relevant keyword that the advertiser is bidding on. Brands and businesses bid on keywords that they want their ads to show up for. The advertiser then pays a fee every time someone clicks on the ad. A Google Ads campaign is a PPC advertising strategy. PPC ads are oftentimes something that appears on your Google searches that you most likely don’t give a second thought to. For example, if you look up cars for sale you will see sponsored posts from websites like cars.com, carvana, or a car dealership. These ads typically appear at the top of your search with a bold sponsored title above it.
The Importance Of PPC In Advertising
There are a few key things to keep in mind as we talk about why PPC is important in advertising. PPC creates immediate visibility to consumers who are searching for things you’re trying to promote in your ads that link back to your site. This makes it easy for your site to drive traffic. At Boiling Point Media, we help businesses effectively run PPC campaigns, which in turn gives your site more visibility. We also adjust bids to ensure the ad is correctly placed to gain clicks.
What Are The Differences Between SEO And PPC?
There are several differences between SEO and PPC that make each of them worthwhile for your marketing campaigns. A few ways to tell the differences between SEO and PPC is the cost, results, approach, and conversion rates. Let’s take a deeper look into the main differences between SEO and PPC!
Cost
One of the main differences between SEO and PPC is the cost. SEO involves optimizing a website’s content, structure, and off-page mentions to improve organic search rankings. The initial cost of SEO depends on how much work your website needs in terms of optimizations. Once these optimization strategies are in place, the ongoing cost of SEO typically remains constant to keep high rankings, optimizations towards new terms, and general web edits. The internet is always changing and ongoing SEO will help your website at the top of search results.
Whereas, PPC is a paid advertising strategy where businesses bid on keywords to have their ads displayed in search results. The cost of PPC is ongoing and has shown to increase over time due to price increases from Google and increased competition driving up the cost per click. The cost of this form of advertising can also increase due to the marketing of new products and services, which happens a lot more than it doesn’t. PPC is able to generate immediate results, while SEO is a long-term strategy, but PPC costs do generally increase over time, while SEO costs generally stay constant. This makes PPC more expensive compared to SEO in the long run.
Results
The results of SEO versus PPC are also different. One strategy is providing long-term results and the other is only providing temporary traffic boosts. SEO takes time to show results but it also provides long-term traffic once you rank on search engines. It may take a little bit because your site will begin to reach higher on the searches organically. As algorithms change, SEO is constantly evolving to optimize results. For PPC, the campaigns deliver results instantly. However, as soon as you stop paying for the ad, traffic will drop significantly. It is important to use both of these tactics at the same time to maximize site views and conversion rates.
Approach
The approach that PPC strategies versus SEO strategies is another one of the main differences between SEO and PPC. SEO strategies include researching keywords, updating website content, and more. A PPC strategy focuses on the optimization of the ad and keyword targeting to ensure the ad pops up when people search for things that are relevant.
SEO and PPC are meant to work together in driving engagement. SEO helps sites rank higher in search results and PPC targets shoppers who are at the end of their buying journey. The goal is not to overlap organic searches with ads. For example, if the page on your site that you’re wanting to promote on a Google Ad appears organically on the first page then that’s a sign that you don’t need a PPC ad to drive traffic to that particular page as it organically appears at the top of Google search results.
Conversion Rates
It is hard not to talk about conversion rates, when talking about the differences between SEO and PPC. Conversion rates refer to the action of a viewer filling out a form, purchasing something, or the like. As mentioned earlier, PPC encourages instant-clicks while SEO will be better fit for long-term clicks on your site. Both PPC ads and SEO will increase the amount of traffic to your site, but they do it in different ways. With PPC, conversion rates will be swiftly optimized by changing the ad copy and target audience.
What Are Similarities Between SEO And PPC
Since we just talked about the differences between SEO and PPC, next we will move on to the similarities. There are a few similarities between SEO and PPC. For example, the goals, the target audiences, and the continuous improvements. Below we will discuss a little bit more about each of the similarities between SEO and PPC.
Goal
One of the key similarities between SEO and PPC are the goals. Overall, the goals of PPC and SEO are very similar. Their goal is simply to drive as much traffic as possible to your site. The goal of SEO is to drive organic traffic to your site over time and to show up higher on organic search results. The goal of PPC is to provide visibility through paid ads, which will most likely drive traffic to your site as the ads are displayed at the top of search results. The main goal of PPC is to create conversions and leads.
Rely on Keywords
Both PPC and SEO are heavily reliant on keywords to boost your website’s rank and traffic. The keywords are taken into consideration for PPC because they will make sure your site will pop up when any words relevant to your site are searched for. For SEO, those keywords are used to make sure your site will rank, again, when the relevant words are searched for. At Boiling Point Media, we focus on researching thoroughly to ensure you are using the most effective keywords for your business.
Target Audiences
When it comes to relevant searches, PPC versus SEO are both trying to maximize the amount of times your target audience is reached. SEO requires continuous optimization which follows changes in the algorithm so your site stays optimal and stays competitive with other sites. PPC lets businesses target specific demographics, devices, and locations for more personalized ads. Both SEO and PPC need to understand the same target audience in order to stay effective.
Continuous Improvements
Another one of the similarities between SEO and PPC is that they both achieve optimal function when they are continually improving. SEO requires continuous optimization so it stays up to date with the ever-changing algorithms of search engines. PPC needs constant monitoring of keywords, ads, and bidding strategies so the results of the ad can be maximized. Boiling Point Media focuses on SEO and PPC working together to prioritize optimizing long-term growth and short-term results.
How Do SEO And PPC Work Together?
The similarities between SEO and PPC have to work together in order to achieve the maximum amount of traffic possible. SEO focuses on organic traffic while PPC focuses on paid traffic, but both of these go hand in hand when trying to maximize the amount of clicks to your site. By combining both SEO and PPC we can increase the visibility of your site while also finding the most qualified traffic.
Is One Strategy Better Than The Other?
Both SEO and PPC have their advantages. When thinking about what you would like to use in your site, it is important to keep in mind the needs of your business. SEO provides cost effective and long lasting results, while PPC provides immediate results and has different prices. Whether or not you’re looking for long-term traffic or short-term traffic will most likely be the deciding factor. These strategies depend on the goals of your business and the resources you have.
SEO And PPC Services At Boiling Point Media
At Boiling Point Media we offer many services including all of your SEO and PPC needs. For SEO, we perform website audits to optimize the amount of traffic your website receives. We research the keywords for your site to help you rank higher with lasting results. For PPC we focus on targeted ads for your desired audience and we offer flexible budgeting to fit with your business needs.
The friendly and experienced team at Boiling Point Media has the expertise needed to create successful outcomes for any business SEO and PPC strategies. We are passionate about all things marketing. That’s why we are proud to offer SEO, PPC, web design, social media management, and more. Explore who we are and what we do for a glance at the many talented specialists that make the magic happen at Boiling Point Media.
Contact
Contact Boiling Point Media Contact Boiling Point Media today to learn more about how we can create tailored content with the latest website optimization technology.
Phone: 405-286-9635
Email: info@boilingpointmedia.com
Address: 7801 N Robinson Ave, Oklahoma City, OK 73116