When you are dealing with competition in your online business, you may need search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) to be part of your internet marketing. Both PPC and SEO are part of SEM or Search Engine Marketing and both can give you multiple advantages when dealing with the competition online. Both SEO and PPC are ways of generating traffic to your website. But knowing their differences could give you a big help in deciding which of the two suits your online business requirements.
What is SEO?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) refers to the process of getting traffic over the web from free, organic, natural, or editorial search results on different search engines. It is a methodology or set of tactics, techniques and strategies used by internet marketers to boost the number of visitors to their website by generating high-ranking placement in the various search results pages of major search engines such as Bing, Yahoo and Google.
What is PPC?
Pay Per Click (PPC) refers to the process of purchasing ads on searchable sites. Its main goal is to drive traffic to your website. It also refers to how an advertiser is charged when someone clicks on their ads. The more people click on their ads, the more chances that they will rank high on major search engines and the more chance of conversion rate.
The differences
- The traffic from SEO is free while the traffic that is generated from PPC is purchased.
- In PPC, you can get your ad on the first page of search engines by paying a higher CPC (cost per click), while in SEO, your website could get on the first page of search engines if it is optimized for search engines.
- In SEO, the cost of the service is indirect, i.e., the cost for SEO services. While in PPC, you pay the advertisers only if people click on your ad. You can make use of the Google keyword tool to determine the amount that you can pay.
- While in SEO, your organic traffic will be continuous as long as your website is ranked at the top positions. While in PPC, you can get more clicks on your ad, you also have to pay more.