SEO VS PPC in Palm Beach

Jan 05, 2010
webmanna

Many of our clients originally called us to talk about improving their website.  Not the look or functionality but the traffic.  Having a website was really cool the first few days and then all the sudden you start thinking now what? That’s what happened to me 12 years ago when I built my first website.  It sounds silly but I know I am not alone in the thinking that building a cool website should mean people come visit it.

So we start asking around and researching how to get our websites more traffic.  Look it up on the web and you will get an absolute overload of information. If you ask your friends they will often tell you that SEO or PPC are the answers to your traffic needs.  Unfortunately when they attempt to describe SEO it just leads to more questions.  PPC is a bit more straightforward.  Pay some money and get visits to your website.  Let’s see just how simple and complicated these two traffic gaining methods are.

What is SEO and why do I need it?

Search Engine Optimization.  Means optimizing your website or blog to rank well in search engine results.  So if i search Google or Bing for “cat shaped cutting boards” I should find your website in the results.  Optimizing or SEO is as much an art as it is a science. Consider that “cutting board” or “cat” will have millions and millions of search engine results with thousands of businesses spending time and money to get their website on the first page of organic listings (search results). Your site needs to have more quality indicators of value than all the other sites.  The primary indicators are based on the keyword content on your site and the back links or other websites linking to your website.  Some of the many other quality factors include, size, age, load times, traffic, freshness, code bloat, deep links, etc.   So an older site might beat a bigger site but not a newer site with more backlinks?  Exactly. Maybe. Sort of. It depends.

When it comes to SEO there are a lot of strategies.  Great content and anchor text links from other websites to your site are extremely valuable.  Knowing which keyword terms to focus on is important too.  The challenge with SEO is that it takes time.  It can take months for some terms and a year or more for highly competitive terms depending on so many factors including the amount of money you have to throw at it.

So then I should do PPC right?

Absolutely. Maybe. Pay Per Click (PPC) is paying for clicks. Usually Google or Yahoo or smaller providers who take your cash and place your site in sponsored listings sections in search results or page ads and only charge you when the link to your site is clicked on. With PPC you can have nearly immediate traffic to your website for the keywords you want.

The challenges for PPC are similar to SEO. The more popular or competitive the term the more it will cost you.  PPC requires some optimization as well including things like keyword based landing pages, negative keywords, and geographical targeting.  There is also the issue of click fraud.  Pay per click or sponsored listings are really great for testing, selling products, and marketing services.

So PPC or SEO?

Testing tells us that using both in your strategy usually means exponentially more traffic than just one or the other.  There is a trust factor in seeing the same company twice on the page in either or both sponsored and organic listings.  SEO is for longevity and domination. PPC is for immediate results and competition.  Most of the time SEO is a must.  PPC is great to do while you are working on your organic results.  More people look at the organic results and ignore the sponsored listings.  If PPC works great then keep doing it.

At Webmanna we love SEO and PPC.  There are a lot of tricks and strategies for improving your PPC results.  There are a lot of strategies and methods for improving your organic listings.  Let us handle that while you do what you do best.   Give us a call at 877 ASK WEBM.  Or shoot us an email to learn more about SEO and PPC in Palm Beach.