PPC normally has instantaneous results and SEO is more of a long play that will reap results long into the future. In this article I will explain the difference between SEO and PPC and when each of them is the most indicated.
What is SEO?
SEO stands for search engine optimisation and is the process of optimising you website so that it ranks well in the search engines. Ranking well simply means that your website appears when a user types in a search query that is relevant to your business. For example if you run an office cleaning service you would want users who type things like ‘office cleaners’ and ‘find an office cleaner’ in to the search engines to find your website.
What are some tactics of SEO?
SEO is basically broken down in to 2 main areas; on page and off page. On page SEO refers to things that are ON your website which will affect your rankings. These are things like the content on your pages, headers and title tags. Off page refers to things that are OFF your website which have an effect on rankings such as how many other websites link to your own website. Both on page and off page optimisation will make up a normal SEO campaign. Other things that an SEO campaign may include is social media assistance and copy writing.
What is PPC?
PPC stands for pay per click. When a search engine returns results to a user the first 2 or 3 results are usually sponsored results. Every time a user clicks through on to the website of one of these sponsored results the company that runs the website will pay a fee hence the name pay per click.
How do you start a PPC campaign?
The first thing a company wanting to run a PPC campaign must do is decide on the keywords and phrases they want to appear for. A list should be made of all the terms that potential customers may be typing in to the search engines that are relevant to your service. This is similar to the SEO keywords mentioned above. If our office cleaners decided to run a PPC campaign and they decided that those who type in ‘office cleaning company’ were the best kind of people to visit their website, they would then bid on this keyword. This sets how much they are willing to pay per click. If they have the winning bid they can then set a daily budget. Once this budget is spent up on clicks their result will no longer appear when a user types the search term in.
Most companies will run a combination of SEO and PPC for their business. There are benefits to both as PPC normally has instantaneous results and SEO is more of a long play that will reap results long into the future.
About the guest author: Vicky works alongside Managed PPC and understands the value of the perfect blend of PPC and SEO when it comes to an online marketing campaign.
This is an original article published on SEO Desk with exclusivity.
Popularity: 1% [?]
Special Offers
Beyond Cool Minisites
For Internet Marketers
50 Niche Starter Templates for you to set up your site and make money!
Affiliate Marketing, Article Marketing, ClickBank and much more!
ONLY 17.00
Twitter
Technorati
StumbleUpon
RSS
Warrior Forum
Facebook
Personally I think we should concentrate more on SEO than PPC. PPC can get expensive if not handled right.