Search Engine Optimisation vs Pay Per Click Advertising

What are the relationships, and differences, between search engine optimisation or SEO for short and Pay Per Click advertising otherwise known as PPC or CPC (Cost/Charge Per Click)?

There are many different opinions and questions on this subject, Which generates traffic? Which is cheaper to run? What should my strategy be? so, in this article, we look to find the pros & cons of both and help you decide which one to concentrate your online marketing budget on.

SEO Overview

Search Engine Optimisation or SEO for short is the technique of making your web pages visible to search engines and once done to get the best possible position in the natural search results listing. Normally people that refer to search engines are talking about mainstream ones like Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask etc. However this technique is also required for more regional and sector based search engines, such as search engines for London Restaurants as an example.

So what’s involved?

The main and ultimately most important facet of SEO is content. If your website has very little descriptive text on it, it will not be catalogued by any search engine. So forget about your nice graphical website or flash based animations, without some meaningful narrative you will be listed on page 347 of Google and that is where you will stay.

Ok, so what’s descriptive narrative? This is text that describes your business, organisation or purpose with the words and phrases people that are using search engines are interested in. Obviously when I say people here I mean Internet users that may have an interest in what you have to say.

Finding the correct phrases is an exercise that is useful for both SEO and Pay Per Click and is called Keyword Analysis. Keyword Analysis looks at your websites purpose and market place and finds the keywords being used on search engines at the moment and, more importantly, the keywords being used that yield the least results in those search engines. Find out more about Keyword Analysis by contacting us.

Keyword Density & Keyword Stuffing

Once you have established your keywords you need to look to develop your content and maintain a high Keyword Density, or to say it another way, refer to your keywords as many times as possible in your content.

So why can’t we just write all these keywords at the bottom of our page to maintain a high keyword density? Keyword density is important, but having a website that makes no sense will once again be ignored by search engines. Search engines analyse your content in multiple ways. They check spelling, grammar, keyword relationships to each other, page placement and more. Search Engines are extremely sophisticated and check to ensure that what you are saying relates to your topic and that you can be considered an authority on the subject. Keyword stuffing is the practice of taking your keywords and loading them into a page so that the page either makes no sense or, worse still, that the words are hidden in some way.

Ranking

Some search engines like Google also compose your position in the search results based on what is calls your Ranking. Site Rank is a topic of much debate, however Google says that it determines rank based on page relevance and links to your site. If a highly ranked site links to your site you get a ranking point and the more points you get the higher your ranking. So you can think of your search engine results being calculated based on your content relevance and then by your ranking. So if a competitor has very similar content to you but you have more links back to your website you will be found higher in the search results.

Pay Per Click Overview

Pay Per Click advertising is pretty much just that. A website is charged for each click through. Unlike traditional media where you pay for an advert to be visible to a select audience, Pay Per Click is much more targeted in nature.

There are 3 main models for PPC:

• Sponsored Links
• Content Links & Banner Adverts
• Affiliate Programmes

Sponsored Links

Sponsored Links are the highlighted links found at the top and side of most search engines nowadays. Website owners and managers bid for advert placement based on the keywords and phrases they select. The bidding system allows a website owner to decide how much each click through is worth to them and the higher the bid the higher the position in the search results.

Content Links & Banner Adverts

Content Links & Banner Adverts work in a very similar manner to the Sponsored Links but are adverts found on other websites other than search engines. For example if your website sells fishing equipment your content and banner adverts could be displayed on websites that specialise on information about angling. Once again a website owner has the opportunity to set a budget for each click through.

Affiliate Programmes

Affiliate programmes are very similar to content links and banner adverts. The main difference is that the payment mechanics are quite different and normally vary from website to website and affiliate programme to affiliate programme. Normally an affiliate programme will pay a negligible amount, or sometimes nothing, for a click through, but pay a significant amount for a successful conversion e.g. sale, subscription or even a contact request. In other words a website owner decides how much to pay other websites for selling their services, this assumes the website is willing to provide the service for that amount.

Pay Per Click advertising differs greatly from SEO as the website is charged for every visitor that is introduced to you. You must still go through some of the same practices as SEO like refining your keywords through keyword analysis and ensuring your content is clear and concise. However, depending on your advertising budget, you can arrange for your adverts to be on the first page of search results every time your keywords are used. In commercial terms this means IMMEDIATE RESULTS.

You also get the added value of being able to distribute your adverts to other websites and search engines without having to manually place your adverts with them.

SEO Pros & Cons

Search Engine Optimisation is certainly important for any website, but what are the advantages and disadvantages of adopting an SEO only approach? Search Engine Optimisation certainly fits in within our Online Marketing ethos but one must understand the pros and cons of the solution to be able to truly deliver relevant content to searching users.

The Pros

• Listings are free (....kinda...)
  - A websites listing on mainstream search engines are free, regardless of position in search results.
• Clicks are not charged for.
  - No charges are made by mainstream search engines for search results placement or click throughs.
• Ongoing costs to maintain required content is low.
  - Once a page has been optimised it does not normally need much maintenance. However keywords change and competition crops up so there is always a need to maintain the pages position but the ongoing cost of this is quite low.

The Cons

• Listing position can not be guaranteed.
  - A website is at the mercy of the way in which the search engine computes its contents relevance. Search engines like Google, Yahoo & MSN are constantly refining and in some cases purposefully changing the way pages are ranked. If search engine position is lost it may require significant effort to regain the position.
• The number of keywords and phrases that can be used is restricted for each page.
  - Only a small number of keywords and phrases can be used on each page. Otherwise the content can become illegible and search engines could ignore the page as keyword stuffed.
• Content and descriptive text requires constant update.
  - This is fine if you have budgets for dedicated content writers, but normally content is only updated periodically. If content is not kept up to date and fresh, search engines often downgrade page relevance as competing pages on the Internet are updated and added.
• Difficult to calculate return on investment (ROI).
  - Knowing how effective your SEO campaigns are is extremely difficult. When paying for search engine optimisation, a business wants to ensure that the service is paying for itself. However, normally you can not attribute conversions to SEO alone as traffic to your website can come from a multitude of sources.

Pay Per Click Pros & Cons

The Pay Per Click pros & cons are a little harder to quantify as I have done with SEO. The reason for this is that some people may consider some of its advantages to be disadvantages and vice versa. The main reason for this is cost!

Pay Per Click has a very regimented and reliable cost on a month by month basis. As website owner you can set a budget and therefore know what your costs are every month. Comparing this to SEO is therefore a little misleading as SEO can be done as a one off project and then no costs are incurred for 6 months as an example. However, if your website starts to loose its position you must start paying for SEO services again which could equate to even more than the Pay Per Click route in the first place.

The Pros

• Costs can be budgeted for reliably
  - A consistently dependable cost per month is often much better than unpredictable expenditure. SEO is unpredictable which can be extremely detrimental when trying to promote new business.
• Clicks to Conversion can be tracked and therefore return on investment calculated
  - A website owner can determine easily how well the campaigns are running.
• Search Engine position can almost be guaranteed
  - Regardless of content, a top search engine placement can be obtained based on a website owner’s budget.
• Infinite number of keywords
  - Regardless of landing page content, the number of keywords and phrases you can use to attract clicks are limitless.

The Cons

• Competition can drive the costs per click up
  - To maintain listing position it is sometimes necessary to keep increasing budgets and maximum costs per clicks to match, and in some cases better, your competitors.
• There is a finite number of clicks available to your budget
  - Your budget dictates the maximum number of visits you can get from PPC adverts. Once your budget is spent your advert simply does not show.

Best Fits

OK, so we have looked at both options and have highlighted some of the good and bad points of both SEO & PPC. So how do we choose between them? What types of sites should concentrate on SEO and which on PPC? The fact is that in most cases choosing one or the other is and will be a mistake. We always recommend a measured attack of online marketing to include both SEO & PPC along with other techniques like email marketing and affiliate programs. However to simplify things lets look at the types of sites that do fit best into search engine optimisation and the ones that are better suited to PPC.

SEO lends itself to highly informative websites. These are normally sites that answer common Internet questions and are sometimes referred to as forum sites. These types of site have vast amounts of content included that deal with all types of issues for consumers all the way through to business owners & governments. The other types of website that can benefit hugely from SEO are the ones that have clearly defined services or offerings and have very little competition in its marketplace. So if you are launching a new brand or product SEO should be a priority.

Some Site Examples

• http://www.ivillage.co.uk/parenting: Highly ranked website after searching for “Parenting”. This website has huge volumes of traffic each month and provides free to use forums for parents to discuss parenting issues. It is a commercial site and generates revenue through advertising.
• http://www.ecademy.com/: Highly ranked website after searching for “business networking”. This website has an online & offline community of business people interested in developing business relationships and meeting new business people. It generates revenue from membership subscriptions and running events and meetings.
• http://www.cillitbang.co.uk/: Cillit Bang is a cleaning product marketed highly in traditional media. Although it is unlikely to be a major search term on the Internet searching for “cillit bang” shows this website first.

Pay Per Click advertising can fit all types of site. However, you need to decide what your objectives are? Because each click costs, you need to make them count so you must put the effort into understanding visitors behaviour when they click on an advert and attempt to convert them to become a customer, register or whatever it is you are trying to do.