06/13/2021
Great Content from a friend Peter Tandy. Your foundation for business growth in the digital ecosystem is SEO. Everything else builds from there.
SEO vs PPC
PETER TANDY·FRIDAY, MAY 14, 2021·
SEO as a Growth Strategy
SEO is all about ranking on the organic (or natural) results on a search engine results page (SERP).
Run any search on Google and the organic listings are those that come after any paid ads or shopping results and are what have historically been known as 10 blue links.
To succeed at driving increased visibility from SEO, it is important to understand how to properly optimize your website. You need to ensure that the search engines are able to crawl your site, understand your content, index it, and show that your site is a significant authority.
With more than 200 ranking factors used by Google's Algorithm, it takes a smart marketer (or, more realistically, marketing team) to understand how to win at:
Technical SEO
On-Page SEO
Link Building
Content Marketing
UX
and so much more!
However, ranking is no simple task. The complexity of SEO (at least in comparison to other channels) and the fact that Google's algorithm is constantly being updated means that it takes the right balance of a multitude of factors for your site to perform well.
And, according to Jason Barnard in our “What is SEO?” guide:
“How high in the rankings and how often you appear is merit-based; these engines will show the results they consider to be the best fit for their users.”
— Jason Barnard
SEO is all about creating the best result on the web for a search query and those who are able to do that can drive significant volumes of traffic.
The Benefits of SEO
But just what are the main advantages of SEO that you need to know about when determining where to invest your marketing budget?
Organic SEO can be one of the most cost-effective ways of improving your site's visibility and can place you right in front of your target customers and clients when they're running a search for businesses just like yours.
Organic clicks are free, and won't cost you a cent. Of course, it takes investment in time and resources but there are no 'click' costs, as there are when running a PPC campaign. Get SEO right and it's free traffic.
Once you've achieved strong rankings from an SEO strategy, you can expect to see sustained results. Your business is showing to potential customers 24/7, whereas PPC ads will often stop displaying when the budget runs out or when you've specified to do so at less cost-effective times of the day.
Organic SEO usually means more stability. Your rankings should remain relatively consistent if you optimize your site in the right way. PPC ad positions can fluctuate a lot more depending on your competitor's bidding strategy.
When it comes to running ads, you're going to be more inclined to spend your budget on middle- or bottom-of-the-funnel keywords to drive conversions as quickly as possible. At least this is often the case for businesses working to limited marketing budgets. But when it comes to SEO, you can create content that targets each different stage of the funnel without needing to pay for every click.
In most cases, SEO is a more cost-effective channel than PPC in the long run, given that the costs involved in using an agency or hiring a team typically remain very similar even though traffic and conversions grow. This isn't the case with PPC as you're paying for every click.
On average, Google's organic results attract more than ten times the number of clicks than paid results, according to a 2019 study by SparkToro. That means you get a higher volume of traffic to your website without worrying about ad spend.
