Learning About SEO and PPC : Using Them Effectively

In digital marketing, many try to figure out the best strategy for getting their websites and content noticed.

Is it SEO or PPC?

Some individuals may think that these two methods of getting traffic to your website simply can’t be used in conjunction with one another, while others might try to use them both.

So,

What’s the deal?

Can you use SEO and PPC techniques together? Should you just stick to one or the other? And which is the best to invest your time and money in.

We’ll cover all of this and more in this article.

The Fundamentals of SEO and PPC

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is optimizing your website so that it, and the content within it, appear higher up in the search engine rankings. This increase in traffic will help your website to appear higher up on the search rankings on search engines like Google and Bing.

This can be done organically and totally free of cost.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) is another method of increasing your search engine rankings.

This differs from SEO since you will be actively bidding and paying for the rankings of certain keywords in order to boost the traffic to your website.

Both of these techniques are used to improve and increase traffic to your website.

While the methods may differ, both are genuinely useful means for getting a boost in your search engine rankings. The question is if you can use these two techniques together in order to get even greater improvement.

 

Which Method is Better and Which Should I Utilize?

In all honesty,

While these two practices have similarities, they are not the exact same type of thing.

Search Engine Optimization and PCC services both do work to increase traffic to your website, but they serve their own unique functions that bring special benefits along with them.

Just to make things clearer, it should be known that when using PPC you can actually hit your goal for incoming traffic virtually as soon as you avail of the service, so long as you are willing to spend the money for it.

SEO

On the other hand, tends to take a bit more time than PCC.

But with some patience and constant adherence to SEO practices, you can get some amazing results.

One should also keep in mind that using PPC services is most commonly reserved for websites that want to attract and target shoppers and consumers that are more prone to immediately take action after they search for a certain keyword.

Search Engine Optimization, in contrast to PPC, is more geared towards building an organic relationship with the user and providing a great experience for the said user while they navigate the website, overall giving them a satisfying time while shopping.

When looking at both practices with an understanding that each is geared towards a different audience and purpose you can better see that neither is truly “better” than the other.

Though,

In general, most website owners will find that SEO is a more organic, and totally free, way to increase your rankings and website traffic.

Are SEO and PPC Competing Practices?

One may get the idea that SEO and PCC are practices that may seem to butt heads.

After all,

Both look to be competing to be the method of choice for increasing web traffic to your website.

It’s true that SEO and PPC are technically competing practices, but that isn’t always a bad thing.

For example,

If you have been organically increasing your rankings by utilizing SEO techniques and notice that a competing website has been showing up first in the ad search results you can choose to use PPC.

By creating a name campaign and bidding on your own website you can essentially push yourself over the edge and take that number one spot for ads of that specific keyword in addition to the organic rankings.

Getting both of these top spots is a great way to set your website up to succeed moving forward.

It’s a great technique and will assist you quite a bit as you further grow and improve your website.

Since organic SEO results are shown beneath ads on search engines you may see less traffic to your website even if you are the highest-ranked among organic results.

While not a bad thing in and of itself, being able to have the highest rank possible will go a long way in driving traffic to your website and helping it to grow and improve.

This is one way that these practices may be seen as competitors, due to the way that SEO and PCC interact.

But those who are willing to invest some money and effort can use this interaction to their advantage in order to further drive the growth of their website.

Can You Use Both?

You definitely can,

But there are some things you should know about before using both practices together.

For starters, you want to target different keywords for each technique.

That means that a set of keywords you would use for SEO organic traffic should not overlap with the keywords you use for PPC services.

You could also use a method where you start off by creating a landing page that is propped up by PPC money. Once you get decent traffic to this page you can then cut the use of PPC and transition to more traditional, organic growth using SEO.

Keep in mind that this rarely works, and if you are aiming to organically grow your website it is better to do it from the start.

What’s the Benefit of Using Both Practices?

As stated previously,

Using PPC will get you some immediate results when it comes to an increase in traffic.

SEO,

In contrast to this gets you more stable results but takes much longer to reach a steady flow of traffic.

You can start off your website by using SEO and organic methods of growth, boosting traffic every so often with some help from PPC practices.

Conclusion

Both practices bring their own unique benefits to the table, and each practice can be used to a great extent to help the overall growth of your website. At the end of the day, it all comes down to how you want to grow your website.

SEO will allow you a better chance of getting some long-term traffic that PPC tends to not be able to provide, but you get this growth at no monetary cost.

Conversely,

PPC will get you a big boost in traffic and rankings for as long as you are able to pay.

Using both methods strategically will give you benefits in traffic, growth, and rankings, and many companies have seen quite large increases in their traffic by running both types of practice alongside one another.