8.5 billion Google searches are processed daily—about 98,000 searches per second. Given those numbers, getting your business’s website noticed can seem daunting. Yet SEO and Paid Ads or Pay-Per-Click (PPC) marketing offer viable strategies to boost online visibility and drive traffic to your website. Moreover, the availability of local SEO specialists makes these offerings accessible. So, contact marketing professionals with SEO and PPC experience to determine which approach suits your business best and will maximize your brand recognition.
Fairfax, VA, business owners have such a resource at KME.digital for their marketing needs. KME employs a team of creative marketers who leverage their knowledge and experience in inbound marketing, web development, ad design, and more for our customers’ good. Moreover, our services provide access to cutting-edge ad tech, custom reporting, and an extensive network. Call us at (703) 585-3321 to jump-start your business’s website today.
Below, we measure the value of SEO marketing and PPC advertising against each other:
What is SEO?
Short for “search engine optimization,” SEO refers to a set of techniques to improve a website’s visibility in search engines like Google, Yahoo, or Bing. The greater your website’s visibility (specifically, the higher it ranks in search results), the better its chances of attracting traffic, leads, and conversions.
Your SEO marketing strategy should involve getting your website to rank higher than those of your competitors. However, you cannot simply pay a search engine provider to boost your website’s rank. Instead, you must incorporate relevant keywords, proper formatting, and leverage other strategies that result in Google ranking your site highly.
The Benefits of SEO
For business owners on a limited budget, SEO marketing has a significant advantage: it is free. Search engines’ organic rankings work the same for every website, no matter its owner’s wealth or company size. Therefore, small businesses’ websites have the potential to outrank those of international corporations.
SEO marketing also enhances your website for readers and search engines. It establishes a consistent tone and style on your website—which underscores your brand’s identity—while teaching search engines to recognize your business’s services. The latter helps search engines rank your website highly on relevant queries, and users tend to trust websites that rank at or near the top.
Furthermore, SEO functions as a long-term marketing strategy. Since it does not rely on payment, organic traffic does not dry up at the drop of a hat. It solidifies your position in the vast scope of search engine competition by leveraging effective and specific keywords on your website. You simply need to continue producing and revising high-quality content.
What is PPC Marketing?
Paid Ads or PPC marketing is the online placement of advertisements to drive business toward a website or webpage. Ads appear in response to keywords, which business owners or marketers bid on and update as necessary to reach their audience. An incredible perk of PPC advertising is that businesses only pay for ads their target audience clicks on—thus the “pay-per-click” descriptor.
This marketing strategy quickly increases website traffic by targeting audiences whose behavior shows an interest in the advertised product or service. While the new traffic can be significant, its staying power depends on whether the campaigns continue.
The Benefits of PPC Marketing
Given an appropriate investment, PPC marketing offers benefits that SEO marketing cannot. For example, by targeting customers, PPC ads increase your brand visibility and awareness among populations with a significant chance of investigating them.
PPC marketing is also a great way to get your business at the top of search results for your target keywords, location, language, and more (they appear as “Ad” results at the beginning of SERPs). Therefore, this alternative to SEO marketing reaches a new cross-section of customers.
SEO vs. Paid Ads Marketing
To say SEO is better than PPC or vice-versa depends on what a business needs to thrive. Every brand is different, and each reaches its target audience in distinct ways.
SEO tends to suit organizations that seek to target local audiences better. It helps them establish an online identity and presence, though these take time and effort to build. Yet SEO provides stability with search engine traffic, generating consistent traffic and leads that depend on no payment.
PPC Marketing works for businesses targeting a specific demographic across a large area. It can get ads before audiences in a fraction of the time SEO efforts require. However, PPC offers none of SEO’s stability. When payments stop and advertisements disappear, your website’s traffic will probably subside significantly.
At KME, we generally incorporate both approaches when designing clients’ marketing campaigns, though specific details depend on circumstances. Companies across multiple industries have used and succeeded with one or both methods. In the long run, SEO offers greater longevity to your brand’s visibility than PPC, so we urge all clients to incorporate its techniques to some degree.
Contact Local SEO Specialists in Fairfax, Virginia!
Business growth doesn’t happen overnight. Countless marketing services offer to help businesses, but only KME’s team of professionals can provide comprehensive marketing efforts to new and established business owners in Fairfax, VA. We refine our clients’ digital presence using SEO, web development, and more. Our local SEO specialists can adapt to your business model and provide services for any brand, no matter how diverse. Contact us today at (703) 585-3321 for a digital evaluation and a new start to marketing your business.