SEO vs PPC - What Are the Differences?

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Pay Per Click (PPC) are the two leading techniques in the Search Engine Marketing (SEM) toolkit. While both are powerful strategies, SEO earns substantially better ROI than PPC does. Numerous reliable studies demonstrate this too. But that does not mean PPC is not highly useful, or even preferable for some sites and companies.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Search engine optimisation will no doubt provide the lowest-cost traffic to your site but results generally take months to show up.

Listing achieved through an SEO campaign gives a psychological advantage over sponsored links. When a person sees the sponsored listings, he knows that the link is there because the company paid money to the search engine to advertise there. But when he sees a site within the normal search result page he thinks it is because of the quality of the site. This gives a psychological branding advantage to the company over the sponsored listings.

• Can be thought of as an "infrastructure" investment for your site
• Has the highest conversion rate and best ROI of any online marketing method
• Highly ranked sites are perceived as being more credible
• Over the long-term is much cheaper than pay per click. It has been proven that you get around 30 times more traffic in SEO links than in sponsored links by investing the same amount.
• Produces long-lasting results - good optimisation can last for a year or more

Pay Per Click (PPC)

While initially it is a good idea to go in for a pay per click program for immediate exposure, this works out to be expensive in the long term.

Sponsored links and pay per click programmes (the green boxes on the right-hand side of Google) work on the bidding model. You select a keyword and bid on it. The highest bidder gets the ad displayed on the top. Each time a user clicks on the advertisement, the search engine will charge the bid amount.

A pay per click campaign is the fastest way to drive traffic to your site and is often used to get traffic while the results of your SEO efforts kick in. The downside of PPC marketing is that you can burn through a lot of cash in a hurry if you don't know what you are doing.

• Is a regular, recurring expense. Traffic stops when you stop paying.
• You can get visitor traffic in as little as an hour after setup.
• Solution for exposure on competitive search terms where you can't get a top ranking.
• Great for testing new product ideas or the effectiveness of ads quickly.
• Great to target a large number of low-bid-cost (niche) keywords.
• Perfect interim measure until your SEO results show up in the search engines.
• Excellent for seasonal sales or other time-dependent promotions.
• Easy to measure and track performance and effectiveness.
• Very time-intensive to monitor in-house.

SEO vs. PPC

Most search engine positions are NOT for sale. About 60% of the top search engines' screen is devoted to non-paid, "organic" listings - which means 60% of your search engine visibility depends on SEO, not PPC or other paid placement.

On average, about 70% of clicks from search engines come from SEO. PPC campaigns usually require nearly as much labour to set up as SEO requires, in addition to the click charges you pay after set up is complete. PPC requires ongoing management, whereas SEO is done once and performs superbly in perpetuity (with regular monitoring and possible fine-tuning). PPC prices are constantly increasing, often beyond positive ROI for your most important phrases, while SEO listings are free. Finally, PPC is increasingly beset by varieties of "click fraud".