The primary difference between Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay Per Click (PPC) is the nature of their traffic generation. While the traffic generated from organic (SEO) search is free, visitors coming from PPC service aren’t free; as its name suggests, you pay per click.
In this blog, we have made a comparative analysis of SEO Vs PPC, hence, providing a clearer picture of their contribution in website ranking through traffic generation.
How does SEO differ from PPC?
Here are some main factors differentiating SEO and PPC in terms of
- Cost
- Conversion, and
- User-friendliness
Let’s begin!
Cost
SEO traffic is cost-free, whereas PPC is a paid service. That’s why, it requires a long time of hard work to bring free visitors to a dedicated website from organic searches.
Note: To bring your website to a top position in the search engine results, you must have an efficient SEO strategy followed by a high-quality website. The competition for any keyword that you can think of is high. You just have to be consistent with your efforts and make use of the keywords to naturally rank through SEO traffic. Though some SEO consultancies claim to have shortcuts to this, it is not so.
If you are a beginner in this field or totally unfamiliar about how SEO works, it is better to hire a SEO company to get the work done for you.
Contrastingly, the cost of the PPC campaign is determined by certain factors. For example; if you use Google Ads, one of the most used PPC systems, then its per click cost of advertising will depend on:
- the keyword popularity
- number of advertisers who are looking to use that particular keyword
- number of relevant websites having ad positions for that targeted keyword,
and many others.
The good part of running a PPC campaign is that you pay only for the clicks received by your ad and not for its views.
Additionally, you can limit the overall cost of your PPC service by estimating a daily budget and not paying more than that. This way, you can make an average budget of cost per click for your targeted keywords.
| SEO | PPC |
| SEO is free of cost only if you know how SEO traffic works. Otherwise, you have to buy SEO services to get the work done for you. There is no direct payment option that could bring your website to the first page of organic search results. | You only pay for the clicks you receive on your ad. Google keyword Planner is a great tool to calculate your average payable amount per click. |
Conversion
Which visitor has more chances to get converted; is it somebody coming from organic search or from PPC Ads?
A visitor coming from PPC ads is more likely to get converted provided your ads are highly optimised for the target audience.
Why so? Here is the reason: the ranking of a web page may depend upon a number of keywords (than the ones that were primarily intended). So, a visitor coming from organic search may not be visiting that particular page solely for the content but for some other relevance.
On the other hand, running a successful PPC campaign can bring you maximum clicks from visitors who came on your web page only for that dedicated content.
| SEO | PPC |
| SEO traffic is comparably better than social media traffic. However, it is not as effective as PPC traffic, while concerning “conversion”. | Highly targeted cum optimized keywords will convert more visitors. But then, the cost per PPC ad will be higher. |
User-friendliness
Neither of the two is easy. Unless you have profound knowledge and experience of SEO or PPC, both are difficult to handle.
SEO is a truly time-consuming process. You may have to put in a lot of effort for months to even years to make your website rank, or it still may not rank at all!
On the flip side, to understand the procedure of a successful PPC campaign to rank your website, you either have to consult with a PPC expert to guide you in this, or you have to attend a full-fledged course in PPC and Google Ads. Else, you have to stay prepared to drain a few hundred dollars from your pocket before you finally understand how PPC strategy works.
Verdict: PPC is clear winner, second is SEO
The ultimate conclusion is that a successful internet marketing campaign requires knowing both SEO and PPC. Through a PPC campaign you can test which keywords can generate more conversions. Then you can target those keywords to try with SEO.
If you can pay more for advertisements and you have high conversion-driven content/product, use PPC. On the contrary, if you have a tight budget for advertisements, use SEO.
PPC gives instant results but as long as you pay for the clicks. As soon as the payment stops, the traffic also stops. Whereas with SEO, it may take longer to get the desired result but once you get it; that will stay longer (conditions applied).