SEO vs. PPC: Which Is Better

In a vast and ever-changing arena such as marketing, it can be hard to determine the best methods for advertising your products and services and what will bring the most success to your overall business. Two powerful and useful digital advertisement methods are SEO (search engine optimization) and PPC (pay-per-click) advertising. 

These are two big players in a strong team of marketing tools and methods. Like many others out there, you might be wondering what SEO services are and what does a PPC campaign look like? More importantly, you might be wondering which one of these marketing models is the best fit for your business. The team at Levy Online provides comparisons and differences between SEO vs. PPC marketing models.

What Is SEO & PPC?

Search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) are two different marketing strategies that share the same goal: finding and driving user traffic on search engines directly to a business’s website.

Both SEO and PPC are powerful tools, each with their specific similarities and differences when it comes to getting your business in front of the right users.

What Is the Difference Between SEO, SEM, and PPC?

There is an ongoing debate among professionals on what qualifies as SEO¹ and what qualifies as SEM (search engine marketing). However, a solid way to differentiate between the two is that search engine optimization is an organic means for businesses to appear on search results pages, while search engine marketing is a paid means for businesses to appear on search results pages. So how does PPC play into all of this? 

Pay-per-click is a tool under the umbrella of search engine marketing. It is a paid advertising model wherein a business pays for every time a potential customer clicks on their advertisement and visits their site.

Does PPC Help SEO?

Pay-per-click and search engine optimization each have their essential uses, but for the most part, an SEO and PPC campaign will have the same goal. This goal is to find and bring customers to a business’s website. 
In short, yes, a PPC campaign can help SEO. Many digital advertisement agencies will provide SEO services in tandem with a potent PPC campaign as best practices for driving increased traffic to a website.

How SEO Helps Your Business

Search engines will organically drive traffic to your business site by ranking as high as possible on search engine result pages by using keywords and other methods. 

How PPC Helps Your Business

A PPC campaign will directly target a user who is likely interested in your product or service by placing paid ads directly in front of your potential customer when they perform a relevant search on a search engine.

How Do SEO and PPC Impact Each Other?

Through keywords and other optimizations, SEO will improve your website’s ranking in search engine result pages so that the user is more likely to see your website before clicking on another.

In successful search engine optimization and pay-per-click campaigns, a user will find your website and purchase your product or service. While search engine optimization and pay-per-click campaigns play their separate parts, they certainly complement each other in very positive and lucrative ways.

Is SEO Better Than PPC?

Search engine optimization and pay-per-click marketing are not necessarily better than one another. It’s helpful to think of search engine optimization and pay-per-click more like different models of cars. Both will operate similarly by getting you from point A to point B. However, different models of cars will have different features that can be more suitable for how you intend to use the vehicle. 

How SEO Helps Boost Business

Search engine optimization is an excellent avenue for gaining exposure and traffic organically in search engines. Since there is no option to pay for your business to be ranked higher on a search engine result page, SEO services are the only way to make sure your business’s site ranks high on search engine result pages. 

Utilizing search engine optimization requires the content of your website to be useful and relevant for your customer. Quality content on your website will not only rank your business higher on search engines, but it will improve the impression that your customer has of your business and product or service. 

How PPC Helps Boost Business

A PPC campaign is effective in directly seeking out potential customers rather than building an organic following via SEO. While the cost-per-click method of PPC will require payment for every click on your ads, pay-per-click marketing can be fast and lucrative when done right. Additionally, PPC campaign search engines like Google Ads will charge campaigns less per click²  when your product or service regularly satisfies a customer’s problem.

Both Is Best

Search engine optimization and pay-per-click marketing are effective best practices for getting traffic to your website and offering a premium user experience. By now, it’s easy to see that both methods have their similarities and differences. 

With a better understanding of what SEO services and a PPC campaign can offer as separate marketing models, you can focus on whether one or both will be the best practices for your business’s needs. 

Our expert online marketing team at Levy Online knows how to implement these strategies and help your business get found. Contact us today for a consultation and get started on a dynamic marketing plan.