SEO or Paid Search, which one should you use?

You could be battling this loaded question in your head assuming that maybe one is better than the other. Usually, abandoning SEO at the expense of Paid Search Marketing is one of the most common decisions businesses make when first trying to do digital marketing. But the truth is that this is a very difficult question to answer in one word.

In this article, you will understand which one to go for between SEO and Paid Search, or even whether to implement them all. It is paramount to first look at the difference between SEO and Paid Search, their pros and cons, and most importantly, which one is a better investment per your business’s goals.

Why should you care about SEO and Paid Search?

You will agree with us that SEO and Paid Search are the two pillars of digital marketing. However, they somehow perform differently based on the data available. It is overall reported that organic and paid searches are responsible for over 68% of all website traffic:

• 53% of site traffic comes from organic search.
• 15% of site traffic comes from paid search.

The remaining 32% caters to other strategies such as social media, email, etc. as far as digital marketing.

It is key to note that these figures are averaged across all industries. Thus, the numbers vary based on the industry. For example in B2B, organic accounts for 64% of traffic whereas for eCommerce, paid search accounts for nearly 24% of traffic. It is also evident that paid and organic search generates 72% of revenues. These numbers in terms of revenue are the reason you should care about SEO and paid investment for your business.

What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

In simple terms, it is the process of improving your website’s visibility in organic results of search engines, like Google and Bing based on the user’s keyword, informational, and navigational search intent.

It helps your webpages to rank higher on search engine result pages (SERPs) organically. SEO is achieved by optimizing online content to manipulate search engine algorithms, which calculate the quality and relevance of webpages to rank accordingly. SEO will almost always be the better investment in the long term.

What are the Pros of SEO?

• Less expensive for long-term goals.
• Requires less maintenance over time.
• Generates consistent and sustainable traffic as a result of brand loyalty. attained through valuable content.
• Builds brand trust and credibility for loyal customers.
• Wider potential reach.
• Cost-effective with higher Return on Investment (ROI) in the long term.

What are the Cons of SEO?

• Takes longer to produce results.
• Poor for time-sensitive content because it might get irrelevant before it pays off.
• Provides less control over performance.
• Provides unclear analytics.

What is Paid Search?

Paid Search is the process of paying search engine platforms and other partner platforms like social media to improve the visibility of your website and web pages to rank higher. It is often referred to as Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising.

The intent is to deliver these sponsored ads at the very top of SERPs and this is accomplished through bidding and keyword targeting. Usually, costs are most commonly incurred each time they get clicked (Cost-Per-Click or CPC) or by how many people see them referred to as Cost-Per-Mile (CPM).

Simply put, the main benefit of PPC is the access to rapid customer acquisition at a more predictable cost per customer in the short term. The main downside to PPC is the long-term cost per customer and increased costs per customer as you scale your investment.

Google, Bing, Facebook, Adscod, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube provide PPC advertising platforms.

What are the Pros of Paid Search?

• Very quick with urgent results.
• Useful for time-sensitive content.
• Provides more control over performance.
• Laser-focused audience targeting.
• Provides detailed analytics.
• Higher ROI in the short term.

What are the Cons of Paid Search?

• More expensive yet short-term.
• Requires more maintenance.
• Grows less effective over time.
• Very exploitative if not done with the right strategy.

What is the difference between SEO vs. Paid Search?

The biggest differences between SEO and paid search ads are:

1. Placement on SERP.
2. Real estate on SERP.
3. Cost for Placement.

SEO vs. Paid Search: Placement on SERP.

Usually, Paid Ads appear at the top of user’s search results. By default, they dominate above-the-fold of the search results, and will always be the first thing a user sees. Paid Ads take up the first four desktop snippets and three mobile snippets respectively. However, they sometimes appear at the bottom of the page, making them the last thing a user sees, as well hence more visibility.

Contrary, organic search results take up the remaining 10 snippet spots on a page, but users have to scroll down the page beyond paid ads just to get to the top-ranking organic results.

SEO vs. Paid Search: Real Estate on SERP.

While paid ads come first, organic content on the other hand takes up more space. Paid ads always appear in the same spots, and are confined to how much real estate they can take up on a page. For this reason, organic SERP content is more flexible.

This is because, not only can page snippets expand and provide additional branded information, but brands can use SEO to appear in additional areas of a results page with rich snippets, the Local Map Pack, and the Knowledge Graph. All this together provides a huge ton of real estate for brands to promote on SERPs through SEO.

SEO vs. Paid Search: Cost of Placement.

Paid search has a direct cost, in that businesses must pay for their ads to appear on SERPs (via CPC or CPM). As a result, the costs associated with paid search ads can escalate quickly. SEO has no direct cost. Placement in organic results is provided for free by search engines, making it a much more cost-effective strategy over the long term.

Of course, both SEO and PPC have indirect costs. Such as the costs it takes to create and develop online content and maintain it.

SEO vs. Paid Search: KPIs.

Two of the best key performance indicators (KPIs) for both SEO and PPC are:

• CTR: Click-through-rate.
• CVR: Conversion rate.

According to the latest data, the top result in Google’s organic search results provides an average CTR of 31.7%. (The second and third spots yield 24.7% and 18.6%, respectively.) Paid ads on Google have an average CTR of 5%. Their average CVR is 3.75%. While calculating an average conversion rate for SEO is difficult, it’s been estimated that overall organic search results are 8.5x more likely to be clicked, while paid search ads are 1.5x likely to convert. That would give a CVR for SEO of 2.5%, roughly.

Which strategy is best for your business goals?

To the crux of the matter. We’ve shared the differences between SEO and paid search. We leave it up to you to decide which is better.

Pro Tip: They’re both great. Now we want to focus on what matters and speak in terms of specifics to your business. To do this we’ve listed the most popular goals brands set for their digital strategies. We’ll see how well each — SEO vs Paid Search advertising stacks up and determine the one you would be better off implementing.

Goal: Instant Results.

Edge: Paid Search. If you want to generate immediate sales, paid search is the way to go.

Purchase intent is a fickle beast. Consumers are quick to change their minds so it’s crucial brands get in front of them when they possess strong purchase intent. PPC advertising is the fastest way to reach customers primed to buy on search engines.

SEO takes time to implement and return positive results. PPC allows for more immediate results. As such, paid search is a great short-term solution for promoting your products and services, especially if you provide seasonal or time-sensitive offerings.

So when you feel the need for speed, go with PPC.

Goal: Exposure.

Edge: SEO. The goal of greater exposure boils down to potential reach. In that regard, SEO has the edge over paid search.

Not only does SEO provide the opportunity to fill up more SERP real estate with branding, but a comprehensive SEO strategy will allow your website to rank on multiple search engines and for multiple search queries, with little additional effort or cost. To similarly serve paid ads you need to create multiple campaigns and ad sets on a variety of different platforms, which takes time and can get very costly.

With SEO you can expand your overall reach exponentially and ongoingly with a single piece of content. Although the paid search may have better targeting overall, nothing can compete with the influence SEO has over local exposure.

Goal: Audience Targeting.

Edge: Paid Search. Knowing your audience and effectively targeting them is an important part of any marketing strategy. SEO can target specific queries, but any other targeting beyond that is very limited. The targeting methods of paid search on the other hand know no bounds. PPC advertising affords the most comprehensive way to target your ideal customers.

The sheer variety of targeting tools PPC ad platforms provide is mind-bogglingly awesome. Enough to make any digital marketer giggle with delight. You can segment your audiences by age, geographical location, gender, affinity, language, device, lookalike audiences, parental status, income, in-market interests, keywords, online activity, and several other factors to ensure your ads are being served to the right people at the best possible times and excluded from negative audiences.

Goal: Credibility.

Edge: SEO. The long-term success of brands live and die by their online credibility. Trust and goodwill lead to repeat business. Authority and expertise attract new customers.

Advertising can come across as contrived and intrusive, especially when poorly designed. As a result, users tend to trust paid search ads less. SEO on the other hand is all about building trust.

Search engine algorithms place a lot of emphasis on EAT content. That’s content that conveys Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. A high rank gives your business a stamp of approval. Anyone with enough money can pay to be in the top spot for PPC, but brands have to earn the top spot in organic results. Users know this. They often scroll past search ads because they trust organic results more.

To improve your brand’s credibility with SEO, start by targeting attainable, less competitive keywords and move towards higher volume targets as your website and brand become a source of reputable content. Make sure you create high-quality EAT content and relevant backlinks.

Goal: Scalability.

Edge: SEO. Scalability defines how easy it is to increase returns, such as impression, traffic and click volumes, as well as customers, revenue, and profit. Done correctly, over time, SEO can create a significant source for all those returns. That’s because the best organic optimizations compound over time. The same can’t be said for paid search. Quite the opposite.

PPC ads have short lifespans compared to organic content. Typically lasting one to two months, at best, compared to several years for organic. Their returns start to diminish after a short period. And the second you stop paying, their returns dry up completely. All this makes it impossible to cost-effectively scale your advertising.

SEO can sustain growing returns over the long term. To accomplish this, we recommend building a majority of your SEO content around evergreen content (i.e. content that will not grow outdated). That way you ensure your content is strongly positioned to sustainably scale.

Goal: Control.

Edge: Paid Search. Having control over your marketing operations is essential for accurately calculating budgets and schedules. To that end, paid search provides far more control than SEO.

Google algorithms have the final say on what ranks where with organic content. While the right SEO experts can circumnavigate Google’s algorithms to provide the best results, it still makes it more challenging to control your marketing. Especially since SEO changes can take days, sometimes months, to effectively appear in search results.

Paid search ads, however, are unaffected by organic Google algorithm updates.

Your budget dictates performance, not Google. Once your campaign is set up, your ads will appear as you’ve written them in the placements you’ve selected. By controlling the bid, keywords, targeting, and creativity, you (or a paid search expert on your behalf) determine how effective your SEM will be.

Goal: Budget.

Edge: SEO. SEO typically does not require as large a budget as paid search. The right SEO agency like Adscod can optimize organic strategies at minimal cost to return huge results. To get similar numbers of visitors, revenue, and profit from paid search would require a much larger budget. Especially right out of the gate.

Don’t get us wrong. PPC campaigns are incredibly effective. But they can be expensive to run, especially in competitive industries. They also often cost much more to get started than SEO. We’ve seen instances where an SEO campaign with a UGX. 800,000 per month budget outperforms a paid search budget in the millions per year.

In today’s marketplace if you’re not performing multichannel marketing, you’re not competing. Your competitors are probably doing both SEO and PPC. And if they aren’t, you have an easy opportunity to get ahead.

Here are some of how SEO and PPC can be used together to improve your marketing efforts:

• Convert more traffic: Drive new visitors to your website with SEO. Then remarketing to those visitors with PPC ad campaigns.
• Get betting insight: Take the detailed analytics provided by PPC platforms and apply them to your SEO strategy.
• Boost keywording effectiveness: Use keywords from your PPC ads that generate a high CTR in your SEO title tags, headlines, and meta descriptions to boost CTR for your organic listings.

Bottom Line: To succeed in SEM, businesses need to leverage both SEO and PPC in a collaborative marketing strategy.

The Bottom line.

SEO and Paid Search are both great!

So, which is better: SEO or PPC?

Neither. They’re both great.

Both SEO and paid search ads can benefit your business and provide amazing ROI. But ONLY if you know when to use them for maximum effect. Ultimately, which digital marketing channel you choose and when you use it depends on your goals.

There’s a good chance you’re looking at the goals we listed above and thinking to yourself,

“But all those are my goals. So if I can only choose one which should I go with?”But all those are my goals. So if I can only choose one which should I go with?”

If you’re unable to do both right away, rank your goals and start implementing the strategy that applies to the one at the top. Then work your way down from there. That said, we recommend taking a cue from that last goal — to remain competitive and dominate your industry you need to effectively implement both SEO and PPC. That’s the only way to ensure you profit from all your business goals.

Reach out to us for unmatched SEO services at adscodservices@gmail.com.