If you are looking to drive traffic to your website via digital marketing there are two main options available; SEO and PPC.
SEO and PPC for Digital Marketing
When executed well both PPC and SEO are effective methods of generating traffic to your website. One method may be better suited to your needs than the other. But before we look at how to determine which digital marketing method is better for your website, let’s take a look at what SEO and PPC are.
What is SEO?
Search Engine Optimisation, or SEO, is the method of ensuring optimisation of websites and mobile apps. This is to ensure that they appear higher up in the natural or organic search engine rankings of the major search engines such as; Google, Yahoo and Bing. SEO is based on your website’s organic ranking and does not include paid for advertising. The search engines will rank your website based on the relevance of the content to the performed search.
There are several factors taken into consideration by the search engines when deciding where to rank your website. These include the structure of the page, the page’s content, the keywords contained in a page. It also considers how many websites link to a page i.e. if it has been shared through social networks.
SEO is a much slower process in driving traffic to your website than PPC. It will take time to reach the top of the organic results. It will not deliver the spike in traffic that can be experienced with PPC, but SEO will continue to deliver results longer term. This makes it a worthwhile investment of time, money and effort.
What is PPC?
Pay-Per-Click advertising or PPC is a paid for advertising. PPC appears in the form of small text adverts placed within Google’s search results and is delivered through Google AdWords. Google displays adverts relevant to a user’s search, based on the keywords included in both the search and the advert.
When a user clicks on your advert it is registered as a click. As an advertiser you pay each time someone clicks on your advert. PPC is an incredibly effective form of marketing as it is both targeted and measurable, and can deliver almost instant results.
Which marketing method should you use?
To help you determine which digital marketing method you should use, think about the objectives you want to achieve. If you are looking for instant results that yield high volumes of traffic and have a large advertising budget, PPC may be the best option. It works well with short, targeted campaigns. However, if you are working with a smaller budget, and are looking to grow your traffic slowly and naturally, then SEO may be better suited to your website.
It is good practice to adopt both SEO and PPC as part of your digital marketing strategy. When combined they can both be very efficient and effective. Consider adopting PPC for your short, time critical campaigns, such as special offers or seasonal products. SEO should be used for improving the organic visibility of your website in the search engines.
If you have any questions about SEO or PPC or what Blackberry Design could do for your business, get in touch on 01527 517309 or fill in our contact form.