PPC or SEO – Which One Should You Use First?

The sole reason businesses advertise online (PPC) or carry out search engine optimization (SEO), is to attract traffic. Yet the answer to better online visibility does not lie in using any one of these methods. You need to employ both PPC and SEO in order to carry out an all rounded campaign for your website. Both these methods offer certain advantages, which may be useful in different scenarios. For example, search engine optimization enables websites to appear in natural or organic search results, but it takes some time to happen. With sponsored results or PPC (Pay Per Click Marketing), the results may be much quicker. Moreover, SEO targets users based on their geographical locations through local listings; hence your OH based businesses will generally be displayed to those web searches initiated from the same area. On the other hand, PPC makes it possible for businesses to be visible to any geographical area that they wish to target. But, this does not mean that PPC is always better than SEO. The main advantage SEO enjoys over PPC is that it is primarily free. Although, websites do need to invest in search engine optimization to bypass competition and keywords to increase rankings, once that is done, they don’t need to pay to appear in organic search results. That is why organic results are also referred to as natural search results. A smaller business can have as much of a chance of being visible in the search results as a bigger business. On the contrary, PPC is technically free, until your text ad is clicked. This requires advertisers to pay a certain amount by bidding on keywords. That is, every time a sponsored ad is clicked by a web user, the advertiser pays the agreed amount. This puts businesses with bigger budgets at an unnatural advantage. At the web user’s end, they may get to sometimes see sponsored results they may find less relevant, only because the advertiser chose to display it for the user’s territory, keywords or search category. All that being said, it is not a question of whether to use PPC or SEO, it will rather be the right mix of both these online promotion strategies that will take your website places and increase traffic. Contact Whiteboard Creations for a free internet marketing consultation to discuss online marketing strategy for your business.