We often find ourselves in a situation of choice with a limited budget. There is not enough time to do everything that we want, or there is no money. Promotion of business on the Internet is also not devoid of choice.
For example, most often there is a question between SEO-promotion and contextual advertising. What is more important? What is more necessary? Where right now to go and spend this very limited budget? Let’s sort it out!
Here’s the plan. First let’s talk about the goals that you want to achieve, then compare the two tools. And in conclusion, let’s summarize and choose the best investment option.
Goals and Objectives: What Do You Expect from the Promotion of the Site In the Future?
It’s no secret that tools are chosen for specific purposes. For example, if you want to be satiated, you go to a cafe or cook food at home, but you don’t go to the gym. It’s the same with online business promotion: in order to understand where to direct funds, you must first decide on the goals. Choose your option and move on to section two.
- Growing traffic to the site. In general, it’s a good thing. After all, the more customers come in, the more they buy. Increased profits and all that. A great goal, but usually not the end goal.
- Getting new orders. The case when you want to see not a big number on the summary of traffic sources, but more importantly, orders. Of course, you can’t overlook here the effectiveness of the site itself and the conversion rate it yields. But that’s another story altogether.
- Increase orders while reducing costs. More and more orders are of interest, and less and less money is spent on it. In general, the size of the traffic is not interesting, the main thing that this month 5, the next 10, etc. But one thing: that the budget is not growing, but shrinking. Yes, it happens too.
- Getting traffic for free. Don’t spend any money at all and get clients. So I want to ask: Do you think this goal is a myth or reality?
- Promotion in search engines. You want to reach the top of the list and get ahead of your competitors.
- Competitive struggle. Often being better than your competitors is the main goal of a business. It may be strange, but let’s leave this option as well.
- Your option (leave it in the comments, we will advise a solution to it as well).
Comparative Analysis of SEO Promotion and PPC Advertising
The goals are sorted out. You’ve already decided exactly what you want to get out of finding your site on the Internet. Now it’s time to talk about the tools.
Describe what is included in each method of work, we will not. Firstly, it would take a lot of space in the article. Secondly, it’s another story entirely.
But what are we going to do? Let’s evaluate SEO and context according to 8 criteria. Let’s fly:
| Evaluation criteria | PPC | SEO |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Speed of obtaining results | You can run an ad in 1-3 days. Consequently, as soon as we launch an advertisement, we get the result right away. Of course, provided that there are no problems with the settings. | The minimum period in which to expect at least some results is at least 1.5 months, or preferably 3 months. Before that, you don’t even need to check. |
| 2. Return on investment | Yes, here again with advertising everything is transparent and clear. There is a special coefficient of return on investment. It’s called ROI. You only need to know the bottom line and do some simple calculations. Yes, you’ll know if your advertising paid off or not, but it’s hard to predict in advance whether it will pay off or not. Moreover, you can drain the budget if you make the wrong settings. And in general, to understand how much money each invested ruble in context will give you is very simple. | Things are more complicated with site optimization. It is possible to predict traffic from search. But the trick is that the longer the period of work with SEO, the cheaper the clients will be attracted. Let me explain. Once the site is in the top positions (as a rule, this means that the technical optimization you have already carried out, texts corrected, etc.), it remains only to maintain the results, and it already costs several times less. |
| 3. Ease of execution (can I do it myself?) | In general, yes, anyone can set up an advertising campaign. Another question: how? But there are a lot of courses and webinars on the Web, which will help you do everything correctly. Although in fact, it is quite easy to drain the money yourself, just put a check mark in the wrong place in the settings. | With SEO, things are more complicated. Part of the work you can do yourself. Of course, if you understand and read beforehand. But there are works that are impossible to perform correctly, even if you study the special literature. |
| 4. Influence of external factors | Yes, advertising is affected by external factors. For example, the rates may vary, or the settings may be changed by the developers. But in general they are all predictable. So we will reduce them to zero in this section. 99% of success depends on the correct settings. | And in SEO again, all is not so happy. The influence of external factors here is the lion’s share of the result. What can I say, if the search algorithm alone takes into account more than 200 ranking factors, and you, say, only robots.txt configured. In general, a very strong influence. |
| 5. Cost | If you can handle the development, configuration and maintenance yourself, then you only have to pay for the clicks. But you will have to pay. No one will show your ads for free. Also note that there are topics in which the cost per click is budgetary, but in other well just cosmos (eg, plastic windows). From this point of view, advertising will never be free, and for some people budget too. | The cost of the work varies depending on various factors. For example, the type of work, CMS, etc. There are quite budgetary manipulations, there are expensive. For example, moving to https is starting from $50., adaptation for mobile is starting from $250., while setting up 301 redirect will cost only $15. |
| 6. Regularity of work | Waiting for results, you have to pay constantly for clicks. And, which is also very important, update your creatives. Let’s not forget that the audience tends to burn out. In short, run the ad once and constantly get results will not work. We must monitor it to adjust, change, test. In general, it is normal to invest money or efforts in support. | In SEO, everything is simpler. Most work is done once and for life. Or until a new update/competitor/filter comes out, which is not very often. There is work that needs to be done all the time, such as updating content, expanding semantics, etc. But the good news is that it can be done at zero financial cost. |
| 7. Risks | Running PPC ads, you risk mostly only the amount of money you put down on clicks. If you don’t set it up right, you lose a month’s budget. That is, perhaps, all the risks. | And here you can make such a mess that you can’t even dream of. I and my colleagues have never seen anything like this in practice. Closing from indexing by your own efforts is probably the least evil. The result of poorly executed work, in the worst case can be the imposition of sanctions and a full ban of the resource. So be careful if you decide to do everything by yourself. |
| 8. Top positions | Of course, advertising has nothing to do with the position of the site in the search results. Ads are shown above and below the organics. But here’s the interesting thing, many people do not even think that they click on ads, which means, running context you figuratively get to the first page of results. Of course, from a professional point of view, it is incorrect to say so. But the fact remains that if you have a young site and you are far from the first page results, advertising is the only chance to get on page one. And very quickly. But only as long as you pay. | But SEO affects the position of the top. And the position of the site is completely free, in accordance with the existing algorithm. That is, you can make technical adjustments once and then hang in the top. The disadvantage is that no one will give guarantees on positions. And even more so, if today you are in first place, it does not mean that tomorrow you will be at the same. Again, the ranking is influenced by many factors. Therefore, exactly as with context, you need to engage in SEO-support on a regular basis. |
As you can see, there is no 100% good and effective way. Everyone has pros and cons. I think that after reading this, the question of where to spend the money is even more pressing. Fortunately, this is not the end of the article. Let’s move on to the most interesting part, the choice. And it will be based on the goals and characteristics described above.
What to Spend Money on: SEO or PPC
A caveat before summarizing – here we assume that all the work will be done correctly.
And now choose what is better contextual advertising or seo. Green marked the best option, based on the desired result.
| Goals | PPC | SEO | PPC+SEO |
|---|---|---|---|
| Increase in traffic | Growth will be fast, but within the amount you allocated and only as long as you pay. If we talk about the average cost it’s somewhere around 500 hits per $1000 | In the long run will give a good increase, which will increase and will not require regular funding. | If the other criteria are not important to you, but you want your traffic to grow, you can use both options to attract it. The more channels you have, the less risk of dropping out if one of them drops out. |
| Getting new sales | Fast and guaranteed. Literally in three days. | The traffic will increase gradually, and orders will pull up along with it. But note that organic traffic is less targeted than in advertising. | To start you can use advertising, and then, when the organics will bring results, to reduce the advertising budget or completely abandon it. |
| Increase orders while reducing costs | Optimizing the advertising campaign will reduce the cost of attracting customers. But you still have to pay. | Good traffic and a well converting website will lead to just that result. | In general, you can use a duo. At the initial stage will be more noticeable in the advertising, over time, the effectiveness will be higher in SEO investment. |
| Free traffic acquisition | No way. There is no such thing in PPC advertising. | Only in the long run. First you have to spend a lot of money to get to the top. | Even using it together will not produce the desired result. |
| Promotion in search engines | There are rumors about the effect of advertising on the results of the top. But if there is, it is only a very, very indirect effect of advertising traffic on the site. | Oh yes, your efforts will be rewarded. Over time, regular work will bring you the positions you want in the rankings. | As you have already guessed, there is no point in using them together. |
| Outrun the competition | Yes, you can do that in advertising. That’s a great way to do it. | It’s also a good tool to use. | Yes, we definitely use both. This is the only way to get the optimal result. |
Brief Summary:
If a small budget, then SEO is optimal to do on support, in the first month the most important work, then less important and so on. Gradually, all the necessary gestures to optimize the site will be done. It remains only to monitor its smooth operation and adjust to changing search conditions, well, and improve the site. The most expensive and little recoup period, of course, here will be the first 3-9 months.
If a small budget, the PPC is better to order, to quickly obtain customers and revenues. This is a great tool if there is no possibility or desire to wait long for the first customers, and the implementation of the goods should have started yesterday. Over time, when the search traffic strengthens, you can refuse advertising or tune it to the product that should be strengthened in sales.
Before You Begin
Don’t forget that success depends not only on where you decide to spend your money, but also on the site. If the site is ugly, complicated, useless, then even the coolest advertising and properly executed optimization will be in vain. So the ideal – to start with a comprehensive audit. Find the weaknesses that not only prevent promotion in search, but also to sell. And then distribute the budget between PPC advertising and SEO.