With so many options for getting a brand’s message out to the public, the methods for today’s digital marketing strategies are more varied and diverse than ever before.

Which brings us to the question at hand – should your business adopt PPC or SEO as the main approach to viral marketing? Many businesses are unsure of which direction to go in this arena but determining the answer to this question may actually incorporate an approach that makes both of them a good fit to some extent. Consider some of these digital marketing tips below.

PPC vs SEO

PPC is short for “pay per click” which is translates as a form of internet marketing where an advertiser pays a fee for every click their advertisements receive. This is in contrast to SEO or “search engine optimization” where an advertisement is placed in the most visible location to consumers by earning that placement through clicks.

Simply put – PPC allows advertisers to buy their way to receiving hits to their site while SEO is more organic as those hits are earned through engaging and unique content.

Selecting one over another is dependent upon the particular needs of your business and its marketing strategies online. What is it your company is trying to accomplish with its marketing? That is the first and most important question to ask yourself as you consider going with PPC or SEO.

Based on the answers that you come up with, you may then have an easier time of going with one, the other, perhaps even a combination of the two together.

When it comes to Google, however, PPC and SEO are two entirely disparate entities from one another and each has its own criteria for evaluations and rankings. That can have a direct impact on your marketing strategies. So consider carefully before jumping head-first into the selection process.

The Advantages of PPC

Most businesses prefer to go with PPC because it can give them a clear gauge of how much return they are seeing on the investment of their advertising dollar. Marketing gurus tout this method because it allows the advertisers to see just exactly how much they are making in revenue from a campaign.

A PPC campaign provides the business with a wide variety of key performance indicators that allow for advertisers to monitor ROI, gross profit, and other essential costs that are important to track over time.

Another reason why advertisers like PPC campaigns is because they can bring traffic in a much shorter period of time than SEO advertising. There is a definite connection that can be drawn between the amount of money spent on the campaign and the amount of traffic generated as a result.

So this makes it easier for a business to allocate a certain number of dollars to a marketing campaign because the results are more apparent at first glance.

But when we say “first glance” there is a difference between attracting an abundance of traffic to your advertising or site and attracting the kind of traffic that you actually want.

Just because you’re getting hits doesn’t always means those hits are going to convert into the goal behind your campaign.. Whether that entails completing a sale or gathering sign-ups for a newsletter, the amount of traffic you attract may not equal success in every instance.

The Advantages of SEO

This method of digital marketing is based almost entirely on Google’s scoring models to push your company’s advertising to the most desirable position in their search results. There is no real discernible way for calculating the kind of metrics that make some marketers opt for PPC, though plenty of folks certainly try.

But what makes SEO the better choice for some businesses? It is a more organic and enriching experience for the consumer because SEO marketing achieves specific goals that can be far more motivational towards succeeding at a completed transaction or a sign-up to that newsletter.

SEO marketing relies on a carefully considered combination of factors that include engaging and compelling content, applying the most effective tags, and careful meta placed inside the coding.

But while the last two are important, Google puts more stock in the first factor and those campaigns that bring true value to the user are always going to be given better scores. That content is evaluated by analyzing how it benefits the user. Does your content offer a solution to something? Does the campaign get to the heart of your customer’s concerns? Can we learn a new piece of information from your marketing?

Here at richmond SEO we understand the value of good SEO marketing and constantly strive to improve the traffic of our clients in the most organic way possible. In addition, we appreciate that SEO can be far more beneficial to the advertiser by attracting only the highest-quality traffic. This results in more clicks, more transactions, more profit for your business.