In the cut-throat competitive world of marketing, it is an ongoing debate to choose between SEO and PPC in order to increase the online traffic and subsequent business for marketers. There are pros and cons of both SEO and PPC, but the choice should really depend on the better end results and optimum costs.
Few reasons why going for search engine optimization (SEO) is better option than pay per click (PPC) as an inbound marketing strategy are listed below:
- Long-term sustainability: SEO has a strategic advantage of building competitive advantage for a longer period unlike PPC, which is more short term and is based on real-time auctioning process and hard to sustain for a longer time.
- Costing: SEO are definitely cost effective than PPC. With an increasing cost of pay per click ads, SEO is a welcome choice considering the fact that it makes a great difference in the monthly fees for online marketers.
- More online traffic: Since PPC are paid ads, they are low traffic generators and hence less appalling. Users normally prefer organic listings over paid ones. Generally, the organic listings (SEO based ) are 8.5 times more likely to be clicked as compared to the paid search results (Pay per click)
- Long term investment: Search engine optimization once done works for a long time for marketers for constantly generating online traffic and better business opportunities whereas PPC needs constant investment, testing, and optimization to keep on performing.
- Better returns: SEO gives the better return on investment (ROI) to marketers as compared to PPC where the investment is much larger than the returns. Also, SEO is one-time investment whereas PPC is an ongoing investment option. As per the statistics, users choose SEO over PPC as high as 70% while online searching and making purchases.
- Visibility: If going by PPC option, it will most likely be visible on a single search engine, which you have paid for as compared to SEO that increases the visibility by being available on various search engines including Bing, Yahoo, etc.
- Trust factor: Many a time PPC is seen as a mode of advertisement by the regular users and lacks credibility and trust as compared to SEO counterparts which are used more organically for better results.
- Brand building: SEO, as a first-page result help in building brand awareness and promotion. PPC, on the other hand, need separate strategy and cost involved every time, making it not the feasible alternative for every business.
For any business sustainability, once enough work is done to set up the search engine optimization (SEO) to increase online traffic and customer base, there is a long-term competitive advantage as compared to pay per click (PPC) options.
Although SEO vs PPC is a never ending debate among the marketers but from a long term perspective SEO yield better results for sure especially if you are a start-up and want to optimize the cost of investment. Depending on your business plan and considering important details like an immediate results vs. long term advantage, costing, etc., choose what suits your needs the best.