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When focusing on growing your brand, having a visible online presence is essential to success. As online marketing has grown and evolved over the years, two methods have emerged as the go-to strategies for reaching new customers: search engine optimization (SEO) and pay per click (PPC).
Here are the pros and cons for both advertising tools:
Search Engine Optimization
Search engine optimization is a great way to boost organic traffic to your website through keywords that your target market is most likely to use. This method is a service provided by professionals, but can take several months to be effective.
Advantages of SEO
Credibility: A huge advantage to SEO is how users view your brand. Consumers perceive organic traffic from high search results more favorably than paid advertising spots, making it more likely that they will trust you with their business.
Long-term Visibility: By using SEO practices, your content is likely to be visible for years on popular search engines such as Google or Bing. Although it takes time to become a high-ranking search result, you get to take advantage of steady unpaid traffic with little maintenance.
Disadvantages of SEO
Industry Competition: The hardest part of SEO is establishing a high-ranking online presence among other people and businesses with similar keywords. If you are an aspiring writer looking to grow your audience, you have to determine how to make your writing stand out from all of the other independent writers on the Internet. Although it is possible, it takes a significant amount of time, research, and content creation.
Algorithm Changes: Developers often make changes to search engine algorithms based on the latest technology and consumer demand updates. When a search engine changes which keywords and website qualities are prioritized in its results, your site’s search ranking can change significantly, affecting months of hard work.
Pay Per Click Advertising
Pay per click marketing has become the go-to method for jump-starting a business. Rather than slowly growing your audience over time through carefully targeted content, platforms like Facebook and Google offer strategic ad placement on their websites, charging a fee each time someone clicks on a sponsored link.
Advantages of PPC
Instant Results: The moment you start a PPC campaign, your target audience sees your ads at the top of similar search results. As long as you have a well-thought out message, you should see an immediate increase in traffic.
Unaffected By Algorithms: No matter what changes take place in a search engine’s algorithm, your PPC ads will not be affected on that platform.
Disadvantages of PPC
Requires Extensive Research: In order to reach your desired audience, you have to do a lot of research on who that audience actually is. If you create a campaign that targets an uninterested market, you will find yourself wasting money on clicks that don’t result in sales.
Reoccurring Investment: While the instant traffic increase is rewarding, you have to continue paying for clicks to stay visible. Once you stop paying, potential consumers stop seeing your ads.
Both advertising methods are worth serious consideration, but not mutually exclusive. With careful planning, SEO and PPC marketing can work together synergistically to maximize your budget and business goals, in both the long- and short-term.