So you’ve got a brand new site and you are excited. Next thing you want to do is to get some traffic and start showing off the cool stuff you’ve got on your website. So how do you plan on going about it? Should you use Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ads or are you better off sticking with Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
Like with almost everything related to SEO, the answer is: it depends!
Before you get disappointed by this response, consider the fact that what works for someone else may not be the best for you. Different people open websites for a myriad different objectives, and all these run with different budgets, while possibly competing for different keywords.
Do What Is Best for You
You want to take stock of a few things before deciding on which strategy to go for:
How Large Is Your Budget for Advertising?
Liken this to the size of your war chest. How much can your business contribute towards advertising everyday? $5? $10? More than those amounts?
If your business cannot afford to contribute anything to advertising at this point, then you better stick to SEO strategies for now. Because while SEO cannot be said to be strictly free, as some claim, it costs less on a day to day basis than PPC.
What Are the Average Cost Per Clicks for Your Industry?
What are other people paying for ads in your industry? On PPC platforms, advertisers bid what they are willing to pay for a single keyword click, and this is what is known as the cost-per-click. Depending on competition and a bunch of other factors, different industries will have different average costs-per-click. If your industry is the one where average costs-per-click run prohibitively high, you may want to skip PPC and stick to SEO.
How Competitive Are the SERPs in Your Industry?
Who are those holding the top spots on the SERPs in your industry? High authority websites can be pretty difficult to displace--even with a lot of time and money! If you find your industry is dominated by such websites, then it makes more sense to invest in some PPC rather than rely on SEO.
SEO vs. PPC
Ultimately, both strategies work if you know how to go about them correctly.
If you are looking for a relatively low cost strategy that will garner trust with your visitors, then SEO is the way to go. People tend to trust natural results on the SERPs because they were earned rather than paid for, and also SEO has been shown to bring quality traffic leads.
However, SEO is time consuming and leaves you vulnerable to Algorithm updates.
If you are looking to make a splash quickly and generate lots of traffic real quick, then PPC is the way to go. PPC protects you from algorithm updates and also allows you to use the incoming traffic to quickly finetune your conversion mechanism so that your website quickly becomes a well-oiled conversion machine.
However, PPC is relatively more costly than SEO and you have to know what you are doing to gain the adequate ROI.
Strike a Balance
Ultimately, you want to use both strategies if you can. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. If you are already ranking for your best keywords, then you probably don’t need PPC. However, if this is not the case do not shy away from investing in a little PPC to get things rolling and generate some traffic for your website. We here at Eternity believe in the power of SEO and PPC to help you achieve your set goals for your website. If you are looking for the best ROI for your website, reach out to us today so we can talk.
