Which Is Better - PPC or SEO? How One Company Increased Traffic 60% After Ditching PPC for SEO

• Most Public Relations Firms Are Not Online Marketers
• SBM Unleashed: Paid Search Advertising
• The Continual Evolution of Search Engine Marketing
• Important Steps In 2008 Paid Search Planning

In regards to this statement:"While a PPC campaign can deliver traffic with relative ease, it can be very costly and has no real longevity -- once you stop shelling out the cash, the traffic goes away"

While I agree to an extent, it's also entirely possible that once exposed to your website via AdWords, people will return, and thus, saying that there is "no real longevity" isn't entirely true. This will depend on how "sticky" your website is, and what % of your customers are likely to come back over and over.

Jill

Posted by: Jill on March 24, 2008

Jill, what you say is true but regardless of your "stickyness" the percentage of returning ppc visits will be rather low and cannot be compared to the longevity of a good seo and linkbuilding campaign.

Posted by: Malte on March 25, 2008

While PPC can be really beneficial for some markets, it's going down hill compared to SEO. Obviously the prices for clicks are just increasing every day, thus making it difficult for some people to afford it within their market. SEO is the way to go for most.

Posted by: Brick Marketing on March 25, 2008

Have you given any consideration to the argument that PPC advertising helps or 'aids' in your organic listings? I have also read case studies that show if a company is not listed both organically and in the sponsored section, while a competitor is, it can hurt the overall brand image (as in your competitor is better than you).

I do agree 100% that keyword buys are going through the roof and SEO, for the long term, is a much better strategy. Just curious if you had considered any thoughts on the above.

Posted by: PPC Advertising on March 25, 2008

@PPC Advertising - Certainly PPC can help organic search marketing or even compliment it. That is why I summarized article with "So the lesson to learn here is to lay your foundation with SEO, link building and maybe even some social media marketing. If you have additional budget, incorporate the PPC as well."

I have seen PPC useful to capture the 15 - 20% or searchers who click on these ads as well as to gather keyword intelligence data to assist the SEO campaign.

In the case of this client, they decided to drastically cut their PPC budget and focus more on SEO and link building efforts.

Posted by: David Wallace on March 25, 2008

Very nice, David.

I actually met someone from Wasp at a conference in New York earlier this year that they were sponsoring.

Even the offline visibility can add to the mix, I expect.

Anita

Posted by: Anita Campbell on March 28, 2008

One must also consider user behavior. There are percentages of users who will most likely click on paid listings and there are percentages who most likely click on organic listings. It used to be a wide margin between the two, but is fairly even now. If you run no PPC then you simply miss that slice of the pie.

Posted by: Greg Arford on April 2, 2008

This could be a good way to start testing rate of conversion of both Natural SEO and PPC. Natural SEO is find as profitable in comparison of search terms

Posted by: martin on April 2, 2008

PPC campaign can deliver traffic with relative ease, people with little time and budgets can try with PPC . It can be really beneficial for some markets. Start testing rate of conversion of both Natural SEO and PPC.

Posted by: henrry134 on April 8, 2008

SEO Over PPC on any day. PPC is effective when you need quick traffic. By the way, its even difficult to get on top of serps for those keywords which are high paying due to competition in serps too.

Posted by: Pushkar on May 1, 2008