December 22, 2008, 4:43 AM — Despite the differences, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and PPC campaigns have one thing in common: they are both keyword driven. Both the processes require investment and both are effective mediums of creating online presence.
In recent times, we have seen the click cost increasing. As a result there are many companies who had invested in PPC marketing campaigns are looking at other options. One such option is hiring an SEO Company to enhance their online marketing portfolio. This will help them to reduce the advertising investment and also increase their visibility.
There have been many cases of click fraud in the recent past, which has led to the increase on the PPC costs. Hence, slowly more and more businesses and marketing companies are moving towards the search engine optimization medium to fulfill their online marketing needs. But the evaluation process remains the same for choosing a SEO company, which is through cost per click.
One of the most important things to note is that an online promotional campaign created by a reputed SEO company will always provide a lower cost per click than the PPC and this stands true for any industry.
The critical difference between the two lies in the advertising investment that a business or a company will have to undertake. Although both hiring an SEO company and creating a PPC campaign have their merits and demerits, going organic also called natural SEO is by far the best choice. Organic or natural SEO is the result of the work an SEO services company because the ranking is not dependant on paid positioning.
To judge the difference and the impact they have on the advertising costs, we will take a look at PPC and search engine optimization separately.
PPC Marketing
There is one common factor that binds PPC campaigns to other avenues of advertising like billboards, print ads, television etc. All of them create a public awareness and remain in public view as long as the advertisements are on. Which basically means that as long as you pay for them, you advertisement will be on air and the moment you stop the investment, you will be off air and consumers normally have a short-term memory. So there goes your visibility.
It stands true for PPC as well as a print advertisement. In a PPC, once you stop paying, your advertisements will not appear on the search engines and this means there will be no more traffic. So you will end up losing all the exposure and all the graphs, charts and traffic reports from PPC campaigns will suddenly become useless.
This means that you need to figure out your average cost per click in a PPC campaign as everything us happening in real time. A PPC campaign can begin almost instantly. The moment you make your investment, your campaign will start and the moment you cut down on your investment or stoop paying, the PPC campaign will end instantly. This is a clear delineation.
Search Engine Optimization
We mentioned earlier that more and more businesses are looking at using services of a search engine optimization company because it comes across as a sound investment and it doesn't happen in real time.
Search engine optimization as compared to a PPC campaign doesn't have any clear delineation as far as deriving benefit from the campaign is concerned. In a search engine optimization process, there is no end.
If you have invested in an SEO company to carry out search engine optimization services, you can stop your investment after the SEO campaign and it will not affect your visibility. The SEO campaign will still generate revenue and get traffic to your website, long after it has been executed.
The impact of the search engine optimization campaign is not dependent on whether you keep the SEO company or not for long-term but the distinct advantage will definitely be long-term and can extend to a year or even more.
Quitting in the middle of a SEO campaign is not recommended as it may be detrimental for the growth of the business but you can always cut down on your SEO marketing spend. If on a low budget, you can derive several benefits through search engine optimization.
This is the sole reason why going organic with an SEO company is preferred to the PPC campaign because it enhances the ROI on a long-term basis.
Seomul Evans is a SEO Consultant with SEO 1 Services
