“United we stand divided we fall”, is a phrase which is used to inspire unity and collaboration. This phrase is apt to explain the joint use of both SEO and PPC together in online marketing.
SEO and PPC are parts of Search Engine Marketing (SEM) which is a type of Internet marketing.
SEM is meant for web promotion and increasing the visibility and exposure of websites in SERP.
SEO or search engine optimization (SEO) is one such marketing model in which changes are made in the website content or the site architecture or both to achieve a higher rank in the search engine results pages.
Another advertising model is Pay-per-click (PPC) which is used to direct traffic to the websites. Both the SEM models can be either used separately or in combination, but it is more profitable to use both the models simultaneously.
The whole idea of using Search Engine Marketing is the promotion of websites on the web. The success of an SEM campaign depends on the advertiser’s interpretation of the user Intent.
The idea of the Search Engines will fail if the Search Engines are not able to meet the Internet user needs.
The content that appears on the Google’s SERP should match the user’s intent and this is the underlying intention behind SEM, where advertisers try to match the user’s intent with results on SERP and hence attract traffic.
Top quality content, apart from having a remarkable SEO plan.
However, planning SEO as a strategy for receiving higher ranking is not easy; you need to master it before you can do it yourself.
But, you are always free to hire the services of SEO specialists who can help you. Therefore, SEO has indirect costs because you need to pay for the SEO services.
SEO could have been an excellent strategy to start with but unlike many of its digital cousins today, SEO can take months or over a year to start working and its feasibility depends on a number of factors.
Unlike old days, when only a few keywords relevant to your website could fetch you top ranks on Google’s SERP in just 3 months, SEO is now time-consuming and at the same time demands a lot of effort.
PPC or Pay per click has a direct cost and wants you to pay for your website‘s promotion. Pay-per-click marketing is all about generating clicks for your website, rather than “earning” those clicks organically.
Here the advertiser has to pay whenever a potential customer clicks your ad. Charges will depend on the keywords you are looking for.
To be more specific the cost per click depends on the competition and the industry. Higher the demand for a particular keyword higher is the charges associated with it. Your choice of keywords will determine your site’s success. You can use PPC for quick gains.
The above image is the screenshot of the Google Search Page in which the first two positions reflect the ads when a user writes SEO Services in Google’s Search bar.
When you scroll down you will witness more website links, which represent the organic results. The above image is the screenshot of the same page mentioned earlier with keyword SEO Services and it is showing some website links.
So you will mostly see the PPC based results on the top and the bottom of the page with Organic results in the middle.
If the Organic result appears in the middle of the page then website’s exact rankings will depend on your web site’s optimization both regarding on-site and off-site SEO.
So you can find your website on the first page if it is adequately optimized or your ad on the first page if you have a good ad budget and a better quality score for your keywords in Adwords.
MAJOR DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SEO AND PPC
| SEO | SEARCH ADS |
| A Time-Consuming Process | A Quick Process |
| Long Lasting | Short Term |
| No Cost for User Clicking on Your Listing | Expensive as You will Pay Cost for Every Click |
| Comparatively Lower Conversion Rate | Higher Conversions Rate |
Another reason why PPC and SEO should be used together is PPC being vital to the SEM marketers in identifying those “magical keywords”.
Google Keyword Planner is a unique tool provided by Google which helps you to ascertain how much you have to pay for each keyword. Google’s Keyword Planner gives the SEOs idea about the popularity of a particular keyword every month. It also points out the cost per click associated with a particular keyword.
Search Engine Marketers are looking for something like Planner because they can find out the commercial intent behind the keywords.
Once marketers can find out the commercially important keywords, they can prioritize and target commercially important keywords. Marketers then use these keywords effectively for SEO.
The combined strategy of using Pay per click and Search engine Optimization together will merely help your website get more visibility and better exposure.
If you are a novice, who has recently launched a new website and you want to promote or penetrate a new product or service in a highly competitive industry then it would be profitable to use the services of experienced SEM Companies which can help you receive more traffic and leads by using a combination of SEO and Pay per click.
They can identify relevant keywords and chalk out a proper SEO strategy. They can also help you with Pay per Click strategy or else you may lose a lot of dollars without getting benefitted.
Companies will charge you for these services but will adequately guide you as per your requirement, saving your hard earned money.
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