Why SEO is a Better Long-Term Investment over PPC
Businesses of all sizes are realizing the importance of online marketing, especially through search engines. Nowadays, people are more likely to end up on your website via a search engine than going directly to it.
However, there’s still a big decision to make – whether to use SEO (Search Engine Optimization, or naturally ranking high in the organic results) or PPC (Pay-Per-Click ads, the Sponsored Links and purchased ads on a Google search) to get in front of your target?
Done correctly, both can get you on the front page of the search engines for targeted terms and in front of your desired audience. However, each has its respective benefits and costs.
Pay-Per-Click is great when you’re first launching your company, it’s a great way to get your name out there and build brand awareness. For a limited time offer or special event, PPC is an effective way to get exposure that SEO wouldn’t have time to contribute to.
But this is bad news for people who rely on advertising like PPC because it’s making it more expensive to compete. As more new companies start using AdWords, and existing companies start increasing their budget and spend, the cost to compete rises dramatically. Your Cost Per Click (CPC) rises steadily, and the cost to eventually acquire each new lead also continues to rise.
Your profit — or the amount of money you make after advertising — shrinks on a per customer basis. The return on investment (ROI) is actually getting worse. And you hit the point of diminishing returns faster
Search engine optimization is one of the best investments you can make online, because it’s (1) high-quality traffic with intent to buy, and (2) your ROI scales and gets better over time.
The best way to improve your SEO today is through an integrated approach that blends content creation, traditional SEO principles, social media, conversion optimization, and email marketing.
A QUICK CASE STUDY
Lets say you’re a dentist and your using Google Adwords for PPC for the search term “Dentist in Anaheim”
Your cost per click is around $13.05 dollars because of the high competition. If you get 300 clicks in 30 days your going to spend $3,915. However if you where to rank for that keyword and got 300 clicks your cost will be around $2 dollars if you where to pay $600 for a SEO campaign. What would you rather pay $600 a month or almost $4,000?
Aside from Pay-Per-Click being expensive!! Its Time Consuming – Managing a Pay-Per-Click campaign correctly really takes a lot of time. Even with the best Pay-Per-Click campaign ever, if you cannot convert those visitors (that you paid for) into paying customers, then you paid for a click, and not much else. No lead info, no phone number. Nothing! Compare that to search engine optimization, where you invest a fixed amount of time and/or money to achieve a better rank, and your cost per click goes down as you draw more traffic.
Is SEO a good investment? Considering the data above, it’s exceptionally hard to argue otherwise.