PPC versus SEO - what do you need to know?

Internet marketing is gaining momentum and is becoming increasingly important in realising effective promotional activities. With the right strategy, you can grow your business and attract new customers. If we want to explore the ins and outs of marketing, sooner or later we will come across the terms PPC and SEO. What is SEO and PPC? What do you need to know about them? Let's find out! Many SEO questions are answered by an SEO course, there are several on the market today, which one you choose is entirely up to you.

What is SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)?

Nowadays, having a company website is one of the basic elements involved in running a business. The website makes it possible to present an offer and provide information on the services performed. Therefore, it serves as a virtual business card, but when we start to conduct properly composed marketing activities, it will also be an effective promotional tool.

SEO is a process that allows you to improve the quality and quantity of traffic coming into your positioned page from organic search engine results. This is one of the intrinsic elements of the marketing in search engines. However, it is important to remember that SEO activities are a long-term endeavour. You will have to wait for the results.

There are basically two types of SEO: on-site and off-site. The former is about preparing the site, i.e. making it more visible and understandable to the search engine robot. We therefore optimise the structure of the pages, the content, as well as the key phrases. As a result, the site gets better statistics in the search results. The off-site SEO type focuses around off-site activities to effectively enhance the strength of the site. It involves buying links as part of promoting advertised content.

PPC - what is it?

PPC (Pay Per Click) literally means: pay per click. It is a popular payment model for online advertising on search engines. The advertiser only pays when a user accesses the ad, not for the display of the ad. The consumer clicks on the link and finds themselves on the company's website, i.e. they immediately have access to our offer. The PPC model most often accounts for sponsored links campaigns in Google search (Google Ads/Google AdWords). Paying for a specific action seems to be a very reasonable solution that helps control the budget allocated to promotion and marketing. It is worth remembering that a PPC ad has to be really well prepared, as the actual price depends on the quality results and the maximum rate per click. When creating a PPC ad, you can not only choose the most relevant keywords, but also add your own text and select graphics - so you can perfectly match the whole to the expectations of a potential customer.

SEO versus PPC - what are the differences?

Conducting SEO and ongoing optimisation of the website serve to make the site appear in the top positions in search results for specific keywords - the higher, the better. SEO traffic costs nothing. In the PPC model, we pay for the adverts appearing in the first three positions in the search results, but only if the recipient clicks on the link. Please note that prepared campaigns may be blocked, e.g. by the AdBlock tool. PPC advertising can be perfectly matched to the target group so that potential customers can be reached quickly. PPC activities bring immediate effects - in the case of SEO, you have to wait at least a few months for them.

What to choose: SEO or PPC?

Which strategy pays off more and produces better results? The search for an answer to this question is certainly still being wrestled with by many entrepreneurs. Unfortunately, a clear-cut answer to this question is not possible. It all depends on your individual needs and where your business is at the moment. From a marketing point of view, the most important thing is to gain organic traffic through optimisation measures. It is also worth knowing that even perfectly prepared PPC ads will not bring the expected results without SEO support. Therefore, it is good to combine these two methods, although we have to wait much longer for SEO results. Stand-alone PPC campaigns will work well when you are launching a new website and you want fast results in a relatively short period of time. However, this solution without SEO efforts is simply not sensible in the long run.

There is no doubt that both methods can increase the number of customers buying your products, and they do not require two separate marketing strategies. Although SEO and PCC are significantly different, they share one common goal: more effective sales - together they gain much more value than separately. What are the benefits in question? Here are some of them:

• a significant increase in your website's visibility in Google search, getting it noticed by Internet users and putting you ahead of the competition;
• comprehensive positioning makes information about your business appear elsewhere on the Internet: on industry forums, blogs or websites - that's also where your potential customers are;
• thanks to the synergy of SEO and PPC, you will win back undecided consumers - remarketing will allow you to reach people who have already visited your website but have not taken any action.