SEO or PPC: Which is Better for Your Brand

SEO and PPC are two major areas of the digital marketing umbrella. Both of them are responsible for generating traffic to your website. In very simple words, SEO helps in generating organic traffic and PPC helps in generating paid traffic. Today we are going to look at which area is better for your brand and how it works.

Let’s start with SEO – Search Engine Optimization.

SEO

Stands for “search engine optimization.” It is a method of improving the quality and quantity of website traffic to increase its visibility for relevant searches. The more visibility your pages have in search results, the more likely you’re to garner attention and attract promising and existing customers to your business.

How it works: SEO requires content, on-page optimization, link building and off-page optimisation. Search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing use crawlers to search out pages on the net, going from site to site, collecting information about those pages, and gather them in an index.
Then, algorithms examine pages in the index, taking into consideration many ranking factors or signals, to determine the order in which pages should appear in the search results for a given query. E.g, Keyword research and content quality are essential factors of content optimization, crawlability, and mobile-friendliness are important for site architecture factors.

SEO targets unpaid traffic (called  “organic” or “natural” results) instead of paid traffic or direct traffic. Organic traffic may originate from different varieties of searches, including news search, academic search, image search, video search, and industry-specific vertical search engines.

important tips to make SEO a success

1. One of the most important ranking factors in Search Engine Optimization is to provide many internal links. They build the authority of your page, create a good site architecture, and make people stay longer on your site.
2. Another important factor to your ranking is backlink (links to your site from other sites) diversity and authority. The more domains that link back to your pages and content, the more you signal to Google that your pages are the best result to reveal to the user.
3. Remember, content is king. But it is only paramount when it lines up with what people are searching for. So search intent is the most vital page-level ranking factor.
4. Keywords themselves are important, but behind those keywords, you require a foundation built on an understanding of your target people. What is your audience searching for?
5. Page speed also determines a Google ranking factor, so ensure that your website is performing well and is not slow.

SEO is pretty much clear now.

Read SEO books to gain more knowledge.

PPC

PPC stands for “Pay-per-click.” It is a model of internet advertising used to drive traffic to websites, in which advertisers pay a fee to the publisher whenever someone clicks on their Ad (Hence ‘pay-per-click). A publisher is often a search engine like Google Ads or Bing or a social media platform like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram. 

PPC is the simplest way of buying visits to your site, instead of attempting to “earn” those visits naturally. If you run almost any search on Google, you’ll see ads displayed at the top of the search result page. 

PPC is an online advertising strategy that you only pay when people click on your ad.  It’s often considered the “go-to” method for online advertisers because they are required to pay only when their ad is clicked and not for just displaying their ad.

When you perform a search on Google, you will notice an “Ad” tag at the top few results and when you run ads on social media you will see them appearing in the normal feed and stories with a sponsored tag.

 That is a PPC Ad.

How It Works: There are several components to a PPC campaign:

1. The Campaign – At the highest of the hierarchy is the campaign itself. For instance, you might have an advertising campaign that’s based on “Coffee Tables”

2. The Ad Group – An ad group is a group of ads associated with a campaign. For example, you might have ad groups like Round tables, Oval Tables, Long tables, etc. 

3. Keywords – Your keywords must be related to your ad group. Google or any advertiser will use keyword relevance in ascertaining ad placement.

4. Ad Text – You will need to run some appealing text in your ad that lures people to click on that. It is usually best to incorporate the aid of an expert copywriter when creating ad text.

5. Landing Page – The landing page is where people “land” when they click on your ad. It should be enticing, well written and should have clear CTAs.
6. Auctioning (Google Ads) – On Ad networks, People bid keywords in an open auction. Bidding for keywords may be a bit more complicated than most of us think. That is because your ad placement is set, by your bid in addition to,
   
   Other factors that go into ad placement are, for instance, the quality of the ad itself. Google sets the standard of your Ad by evaluating its relevance to your keywords, the ad’s click-through rate, and your landing page relevance. To evaluate your overall ad rank, you simply multiply your bid by your quality score. As an example, if your quality score is 10 and your bid is $1.00 then your rank is 10 (10 x 1). If that number is higher than the ad rank of other advertisers bidding on the identical keyword, then your ad will appear on top.
   
7. Budget – (Social Media Ads) – While setting up a social media PPC campaign you can define a lifetime budget or daily budget totally depending on your budget.

important tips to run a successful  PPC Campaign

1. Choose low-competition Keywords which are unlikely to be chosen by others.
2. Once your campaign begins, monitor it closely and track your metrics and update your campaign accordingly. You can monitor all your results using tools like Google Analytics.
3. Target local keywords which are specific to your geographical location (e.g Biryani in Delhi).
4. Since you only have a short space in which to get your message across, every word needs to count. Tap into emotions, use a compelling call to action, and ensure your ad copy addresses the customer pain points you’re seeking to solve.
5. Always check what your competition is doing in their campaigns. Don’t just copy their campaign instead add more value and information to your campaigns.

Conclusion –

Both SEO and PPC could be beneficial for your brand but it depends totally on your business objectives. If you have a short-term goal and are looking for some quick leads for your business then I’d recommend going with the PPC campaigns.
If you have a long-term perspective then SEO can play a vital role since it takes a long-term and consistent effort to see the organic traffic coming to your website. 

Check out how did we improve SEO for these brands. Click here.

We at Marketing Lad have hands-on experience in both PPC and SEO and If your brand needs any help with these campaigns feel free to get in touch with us