Search is certainly the most critical digital marketing channel today since it offers the opportunity to improve brand awareness as well as capture conversions.
Pay Per Click or PPC is basically paid search marketing where sponsored links are bought on search engine results pages (SERP), blogs, websites or content sites.
Paid search involves paying a certain fee, based on either clicks or views, to display your website on the SERP whenever a user searches for specific phrases or keywords in the search engine.
A well optimized and implemented PPC campaign is quite effective for improving traffic to your website.
Unlike other traditional kinds of online advertising such as SEO (Search Engine Optimization) or Social Media, Pay Per Click is specifically designed to target users who are already interested in making a transaction by clicking or selecting specific ads. PPC adverts are therefore an excellent option for complementing your SEO efforts and capitalizing on your coverage.
Top 5 Benefits of Using PPC
• Speed to market — It is possible to launch PPC ads quickly and start bringing in qualified leads and targeted traffic to your website.
• Reach — Using pay per click can help in driving more traffic to your website, which expands your brand visibility online and helps establish you as an industry leader.
• Better targeted traffic — By allocating different PPC ads for specific demographics and keywords, you can significantly improve the quality of your website traffic. You can even specify the best sales times to run the ads and also in specific geographical regions.
• Richer testing capabilities — Pay Per Click is an excellent low-risk way to test for keywords, which allows you to decide whether a complete SEO optimization campaign will be worthwhile for your business. Additionally, it allows testing of different pages on your site to establish the pages with the highest conversion rates.
• Maximize your ROI — Finally, since you only pay for pay per click ads when an ad is clicked, it is easier to manage expenses and track conversions to figure out your ROI. Data is also reported correctly and accurately, allowing you to extensively track your campaign results.
Differences between SEO and PPC
• Cost — Unlike PPC, SEO web traffic is free from the search engines. However, gaining this free traffic will require lots of hard work, a high-quality website, and a good SEO strategy.
• Traffic potential — SEO offers continuous organic traffic from the search engine, provided you rank well for your chosen keywords. If your keywords are very competitive, then it makes sense to use PPC to ensure you are on the first page.
• Conversion — In most cases, pay per click ads have better conversions than organic. In contrast, SEO traffic is better than other kinds of traffic, like social media, but it does not offer the same kinds of conversions as PPC traffic.
The Bottom Line: Combine PPC and SEO
Even though PPC drives better quality visitors to websites, you must ensure you continue nurturing and developing a lasting, profitable relationship. SEO can offer value proposition and brand awareness to ensure your ads are not attracting only window shoppers.
