The majority of businesses that are thriving online depend on traffic to their websites and churning out conversions from those well-qualified leads. With more website traffic, your chances of conversions significantly rise for your business.
There are quite a few ways to generate leads for your online business, with SEO and paid search marketing being the top solutions to attract prospects to your website.
Through the years, we've served numerous clients in diverse industries to bring about results that facilitate their growth and success, both online and offline. And a lot of our clients have reached out to us to increase their business leads. Typically, the first question they ask is; which one is better for lead generation, SEO or PPC. Both these market practices deliver results differently and should be used as per the client's unique requirements.
In this article, we'll look into the benefits and drawbacks of both the methods and understand which one works best and under what circumstances. It's also worthwhile to know that both these methods can also be used side-by-side for maximizing results and harmonizing your lead generation campaigns.
So let's take a look into when these methods should be used and what works best for your type of business.
SEO and PPC are both methods to increase the footfall of your website and capture prospects to move them down your sales funnel, converting them into long-term customers. However, these methods differ in scope, result, and how they generate leads.
SEO or search engine optimization refers to the process of improving on-page and off-page elements of your website to get ranked on the search engine results page (SERP) for user queries. SEO strives to rank sites on top of Google SERPs whenever users search for phrases relevant to the site's niche. The websites that rank on Google's first page of results garner much higher traffic volumes than those positioned on the second page or lower.
Meanwhile, PPC or Pay-Per-Click are paid advertisements displayed on top of organic results on SERP. In this method, you've to bid for keywords that will make your site appear on top of the SERP whenever a user searches for those keywords. The word "Ad" would appear alongside your website in the SERP.
In a nutshell, PPC generates much more quickly than SEO but is much more expensive than the latter and needs a decent budget to deliver results to your business.
Let's look at both of them more closely.
These methods are amongst the most popular to generate leads for your business online. However, both of these differ in their basics and purpose.
Here are some parameters to differentiate between SEO and PPC as lead generation tools:
Both these methods are proven to generate high visibility for your brand online. As you target keywords in SEO and PPC, your site is positioned on top of SERPs, and you get large volumes of traffic.
However, the difference is that while SEO accords you visibility, PPC guarantees hyper-visibility. Through PPC advertising, your website will be positioned above the organic results, which means the cream of traffic will see your site appear on the SERP.
With SEO, even if your website appears on Google's first result page, it'll be below the sponsored ads, which means you'll get less visibility and organic traffic on your site.
Although these methods are proven recipes to grow your brand online, there's a basic difference. SEO is a better method if you're looking for long-term growth for your business online. Although it takes time to garner results, all that effort you've put into your SEO campaign will last longer than PPC campaigns.
PPC advertising gets you instant results. You can set up your ad easily and start getting huge traffic volumes within a week. The bigger your ad budget is, the more time your ad will run on Google. But once you stop your PPC ad, your website will return to its organic ranking, and you'll see a sudden and significant drop in traffic.
Thus, SEO is the right fit for you if your goal is to get long-term visibility and organic traffic. On the other hand, if you need instant results and have got the right budget to spend, PPC will work better for your business.
Building brand credibility and trust are one of the foremost benefits of SEO. With your brand being placed high on the SERPs, your target audience will ultimately become familiar with your business, which instills confidence and trust in them. This also leads to customer loyalty in the long term.
The catch here is that most individuals tend to trust organic rankings more than paid ads. This means that users looking to buy products and services are more likely to trust a business that ranks organically than a business running paid ads. Thus, you're more likely to boost your sales and revenue by focussing on improving your rankings via SEO.
Your organic ranking strategy will give you better returns than paid search advertising in terms of ROI. SEO doesn't require any kind of investment; you just need to optimize various on-page and off-page factors, and over time, you'll start getting results with improved rankings.
PPC is a much more costly method. You've to bid for keywords and then pay Google for every click made on your ad copy. Although PPC does guarantee you a higher number of leads in less time than SEO, it's more expensive than the latter and will only give you results as long as you spend on the ad. SEO, on the other hand, is a long-term fix with a better ROI for your business.
PPC ads are pretty easy to set up. Anyone with a basic knowledge of digital marketing can set up a PPC campaign in no time once they know which keywords and demographics to target.
However, SEO requires constant deliberation for months to get you top rankings. You also need to be well-versed with the numerous ranking factors that Google considers to get results. So while PPC can get you results within a matter of days, SEO requires a more technical hand and consistency in efforts over a longer period of time.
This is one of the hallmarks of PPC campaigns. Need faster leads for your business? PPC is what you should invest in for an instantaneous boost to traffic and conversions.
PPC is more accurate when it comes to targeting prospects who are more likely to be interested in your products and services. When setting up a PPC campaign, you can choose your keywords, budgets, and the demography that you wish to focus your ad copy on. With precision targeting of user behavior, location, language, etc., you can be assured of gaining more qualified leads that have better chances of conversions.
Meanwhile, SEO improves your rankings for keywords but is not laser-targeted towards particular niche users like PPC. Therefore, the traffic you get from SEO doesn't always guarantee conversions.
When it comes to reliability, PPC gets one over SEO. You simply need to identify the right keywords and prospects to target to generate instant leads who are more conversion-friendly than traffic that comes through SEO.
Conversely, the success of your SEO campaign largely depends on the quality of content and your efforts on other factors that improve rankings. In addition, there's no way you can be sure of your rankings being stable in the longer term; your competitor may have a better strategy and may outrank you in time.
But PPC guarantees stability; your ad will stay on top of the SERP until you spend on it.
This is one of the major drawbacks of paid search ads. The problem is that anyone can copy your ad and start outbidding you for your targeted keywords. In this case, you'll no longer have a PPC campaign, and your competitor will have copied your ad and positioned himself on top of SERPs by copying your ad.
But, there's no way there can be a duplication of your SEO efforts. All the hard work you've put in for your SEO campaign will be solely yours to enjoy.
Both SEO and PPC are proven techniques to generate leads online, but which one to choose depends on the various factors listed above. If you're looking for instant leads, then PPC is where you should invest in. But if you're looking to become an industry leader and an authority in your niche, SEO is more likely to help you achieve that.
Do you want high-quality leads for your business?
As a leading digital marketing agency in Lucknow, VicDigit Technologies has an expert team of experienced professionals who are proficient in generating more opportunities for your business.
Whether you're looking for SEO success or PPC, we at VicDigit Technologies can help you get the visibility that your brands need to grow and succeed digitally. Contact us for stellar lead generation campaigns and other digital opportunities that'll propel your brand over your competitors.