SEO vs PPC
The question is always asked, "what is better, Search Engine Optimization or Pay Per Click?" There are, of course, pros and cons to using either of the two.
One of the main benefits to using PPC advertising over SEO is instant traffic. You do not have spend a lot of time optimizing your website or build up a large number of links pointing to your site so you can get organic search engine traffic. You can set up an ad campaign and begin to see traffic almost immediately.
The main downside to using PPC is it can be costly. If you don't know what you're doing you can end up loosing a lot of money; but if done right, it can be your ticket to vast amounts of traffic, which means many more sales and/or subscribers to your mailing list!
The best benefit of using SEO is it generates free traffic (assuming you haven't paid for links or directory listings or anything like that). SEO requires a lot more work, but it will often result in the best payoff in the end. Plus, organic traffic tends to convert more than paid traffic. As your site grows it will generate more incoming links and your search engine rankings will increase.
Studies have also shown that people browsing the Internet today have become accustomed to seeing ads everywhere and have begun to ignore and filter them out when they view a webpage. The same is also true for search engine listings - people will most often view the organic search results before they view any of the PPC ads displayed to the top or right of the listings. This gives you an added advantage if your website is listed in the top three. If it is, chances are people will click through to your website before they click on any of the sponsored links.
When it comes down to it, you need to decide what method best suits your business. If you want quick, targeted traffic, or your webpage is too small to be listed at the top of the search engines, then PPC is probably best for you.
On the other side, if you're developing a content site, or a site that you want to display AdSense ads on, you will want to spend the time to develop some organic traffic through the search engines.
You can also have the best of both worlds and create a combination of the two. If you're creating a site that you want to eventually have strong search engine listings, you can create several PPC ad campaigns to kick-start your traffic while the organic traffic slowly builds up.
