SEO Vs AdWords – Which One Do You Think is Best?
There are basically two options to get traffic on the Internet. One is contract advertising, in this case, AdWords or PPC (pay per click) to appear at the top of Google search results, and the other one is investing in SEO services mostly known as organic positioning to achieve natural search engine optimization.
Here is a brief comparison on advantages and disadvantages on each one of them.
SEO Advantages
1.- We get our potential customers by offering what they seek for.
2.- We are not interrupting the user like in other traditional advertising channels, but we are helping them in their search.
3.- Return on investment in the long run if we adapt to changes. if we do properly, the return in search engine optimization can pay for years.
These are the main reasons that SEO gives us regarding Internet advertising methods. But there is always a possibility, and it can happen, that Google decides from one day to the other to change the algorithms and take into consideration that our website is not so great anymore. Even tough, we have been doing everything right from day one. The key here is do not fall asleep.SEO Disadvantages
1.- SEO is not nuclear physics but it is hard enough to makes us make mistakes.
2.- SEO is unpredictable, no one can assure that we will always improve our ranking positions or even be maintained over time.
3.- If more than 50% of our revenues come from SEO we are playing with fire.
This is not to be alarmed, it is to avoid dependency or at least minimize it as much as possible. Remember that even Google can make mistakes.
PPC Advantages
1.- It is efficient, you pay only when potential customers click on your ad. You can determine the amount of budget you are going to spend.
2.- It is Integrated. When linking AdWords accounts with Google Analytics, you can see which ads attract more visitors to your website and get more information about how to improve conversions on your site.
3.- The world is moving towards online advertising because it works. In fact, many advertisers has increased its focus on online advertising outpacing traditional media and paper advertising.
4.- It is fast. You see results quickly, specially when time is one of your concerns.
PPC Disadvantages
1.- One of the greatest dangers may be that if you are unfamiliar with the bidding system by establishing the price of each click, the cost of campaigns may be much higher than it should be.
2.- Due to the flexibility provided by the system and the movements that competition can perform, you must be constantly alert to the evolution of campaigns, controlling the ads behavior as well as to optimize them by proving with different keywords and ads messages.
3.- In all paid advertising systems that exist in the market, what sets prices of campaigns is the balance between supply and demand. In case of PPC this fact is even more pronounced, and in sectors with greater competition, each click has an exorbitant price.
4.- The constraints with tools at time of writing the ads such as not allowing more than 25 characters in the title or more than 35 in the two description lines of the ad, leads to a homogenization ads, which does not allow much room for creativity.
In conclusion
SEO is a long-term tool that relies heavily on a well trained person specialized in good techniques to achieve quick results. Still getting to the first position is a difficult job.
In the short run a PPC campaign is more effective in terms of ROI (return on investment) because with the same investment, PPC generates more clicks. However in the long term the equation becomes reverse. The ROI of doing SEO becomes dominant compared to PPC as your investment requires little maintenance and the click curve is upward.
While SEO is effective, only reaching to the top positions is really relevant. While doing a PPC campaign, in most cases, will be optimal in terms of positioning.
The solution is diversification. The best strategy would be to use both services investing in SEO, but using PPC to those keywords that have much competition and would be difficult and costly to position with SEO
We must diversify our online business as much as possible to avoid dependence on a single medium. Martin Hernandez