Which One is Better - PPC or SEO? [Infographic]

At times, it can be really difficult to pick PPC or SEO. Both of them have their own pros and cons, which is why it can be tricky to pick the most suitable one for your business.

Keep reading, as it will help you understand the pros and cons of SEO and PPC. You will also learn how you can combine both strategies to get the best of both worlds.

Pros of PPC

1. PPC helps you increase the visibility of your webpages. With PPC strategies, you can secure a top rank in search engine results.
2. PPC helps you improve your targeting. You can target your audience based on their location as well. This, in turn, helps you bid for specific keywords easily and helps you generate more clicks from your target audience.
3. You can easily measure the performance of your PPC campaign and the results generated through it. This helps you figure out how many people in your target audience clicked your ad and converted. With such insights, you can analyze your PPC strategies and strengthen them even more.
4. In PPC, you can track the ROI generation of your ads in real-time. The result shows the actual demographics and data along with landing pages and keywords. As a marketer, this can really benefit your business. 

Cons of PPC

1. PPC strategies are expensive, and not every business can afford PPC, especially if they’re a startup. In addition to this, there is no guarantee that your target audience will click your ad.
2. Surprisingly, click fraud is a real problem. In fact, your competitors could keep clicking on your ad link until you run out of budget. There’s also accidental clicks so make sure to include those into your PPC budget.

Pros of SEO

1. Unlike PPC, SEO assures sustainable growth for your business. SEO strategies help you generate organic and high-quality traffic which helps you achieve long-term results for your business. Also, when done correctly, you actually don’t have to depend on your money to generate high-quality traffic.
2. SEO is a cost-effective strategy. Unlike PPC strategies, you don’t have to spend your money on each impression or click.
3. SEO helps you generate more high-quality traffic to your website. As a result, it will help you increase awareness of your brand. The higher your brand awareness, the more educated your target audience will be about your brand’s product or services. This can encourage them to make a purchase.

Cons of SEO

1. There is no one straight formula to implement SEO strategies. In fact, algorithms change often, that’s the very nature of SEO. So, it’s important for your team to stay informed about changes, and it can be challenging to do so.
2. Unlike PPC, SEO strategies cannot help you generate instant results for your business. You might want to opt for PPC strategies if you want to see instant results.

Benefits of Integrating SEO and PPC

You can combine the best of both SEO and PPC to generate the maximum benefit for your business. Are you wondering what benefits you can get out of an integrated approach? 

Let’s check out some of the major benefits: 

1. When done correctly, both SEO and PPC can help you build the credibility of your brand.
2. With PPC and SEO, you can also widen the reach of your brand and generate high-quality traffic to your website.
3. You can leverage the keywords and conversion data generated from your PPC campaigns to create a more effective SEO strategy.

Check out this infographic by SpyFu to learn more about PPC and SEO.

Author Bio:

Zac Harris is the Director of SEO at SpyFu. He is passionate about scaling companies and testing all things SEO.

Read more about SEO and PPC on Marketing Eggspert