The Optimization Dilemma - SEO VS PPC

Advent of computer was the first thing, that changed the equation of the business structure of an organization. And Internet was the another, that changed how businesses were never mutually exclusive. Internet over the years have become one of the battle ground of fiercest campaigns in the advertisement world. It has become mandatory for any business organization to get a better rank for its website in the Search engine listings. Search engines as of now, has become the most common medium for an Internet users to look for the information.

SEO(Search Engine Optimization) and PPC(pay per click) are two of the most popular search engine marketing techniques to divert the targeted traffic toward a specific website.

Search engine optimization is a technique widely used in the Internet marketing campaigns. It is basically used to steadily position the website at the top rank of popular search engines to give a brand visibility by optimizing the content of the site.

So every time a user starts a search on products that your company is selling, then the website of your company gets listed in the top ranks of the listing, thus getting you your potential customers. One should be aware of the fact that, Internet users have a common practice to limit their search in the first page of the search result itself. Hence its pertinent that your website has better rank to be featured among those. This can be ensured by effective SEO campaigns.

Pay Per Click or better known as PPC, is an another traffic generator program, wherein you have to pay each time someone clicks on you link. PPC is a technique of adding your website link in popular search engines. Now whenever a visitor clicks the link, he is directed to the respective website, and for this service a commission has to be paid to the search engine. One can gain immediate results through PPC, and a potential customer can easily reach you without much effort.

However both SEO and PPC have their own pros and cons. But on the long run, its SEO that pays Off.

One of the initial requirement to start an SEO campaign is a higher investment compared to PPC. But over the time, SEO managed websites will require very less additional costs to bring in high quality traffic. But in PPC campaign, a constant investment is very essential to keep bringing in the desired traffic. Hence SEO proves to provide higher ROI(Return of investment) over the time unlike PPC.

SEO may take time to show its desired result, whereas one can witness immediate result through PPC campaign. But however, PPC doesn't guarantee that all the clicks will fetch positive results.

It's not just the investment of significant amount of time but also efforts put into analyzing the PPC campaign, managing bids, and writing new advertising articles, that makes this technique a tardy one. On the other hand, SEO campaign, with a good strategy with its usage of proper key words can return benefits in bounds.

One of the major drawback of PPC is that it is very susceptible to click fraud. Click fraud is an intended attack to reduce the profitability of your PPC campaign. There are scores of methods to achieve Click fraud. One of the most popular one is the robotic script that clicks a competitors' PPC links from time to time. This has high denting effects on a PPC campaign, such as it would cost you your money, even though no real traffic are diverted to your website. Another such click fraud technique is, that search engines are repeatedly run but without clicking on your PPC link. This affects the popularity of the site and hence may subside to far lower ranks. But SEO campaigns are known to be free of such kind of frauds.

So taking the overall view of the comparative analysis of the SEO and PPC campaigns, one can note that, a successful SEO campaign would demand time and experience but on the other hand, PPC requires time, experience as well as constant flow of money.

It is advisable that based on the requirement of the business strategy, one should either go for SEO or the PPC, not just on the misguided perceptions.