Should you invest in both SEO and PPC?

There is always a lot of friendly rivalry between the Pay Per Click (PPC) and the Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) departments within the company. Debates always occur, discussing as to which strategy creates the best return on investment, whether PPC is just a short term method of advertising whilst the SEO campaign kicks in, but there are both advantages and disadvantages for both. The core advantage SEO has over PPC is that you do not pay for each visitor/click and that all traffic is free. This is not altogether true; instead of paying for each click, you are paying a flat fee to a company to get you up in the listings. This is why it is very important that you correctly analyse your keywords and how these relate to your site.

Testing area

This is where PPC is very important. It creates a method of advertising structured very closely to natural search, but gives you full flexibility, transparency and control over your campaign. As well as running a fully functioning PPC, you can use it as a testing area, experimenting on keywords which could be potentially used for SEO before you put a lot of investment towards areas in which you have no control over.

Brand Protection

Many of the campaigns which we run include a brand campaign, even if they appear number one when they are searched for naturally. There are arguments both for and against this strategy. Why pay for traffic which you could get for free? My answer to this is that there are a certain percentage of users who think that the highest position in Google is that of position one in the sponsored listing, which competitors could take advantage and deliberately mislead users into thinking they are the correct brand. Also it reinforces your brand, having two listings on the first page.

Full control over your products and services

To appear number one for all the products and services that you offer would be near impossible and very expensive, and so a PPC campaign can fill in the gaps for your SEO campaign. Because you have full control over the keywords which you bid on, you can pick and choose the areas of your business that require large scale online investment, instantly.

Special offers

Because any changes which you make on your campaign are near enough instant, you can run limited special offers and promotions at the drop of a hat. This is impossible to do in SEO as any changes made may take months to replicate into your search result.

Philip Pollock
PPC Account Manager