Actually, it’s a bit of a mystery to us as to where companies come by the notion that this is an either/or issue. There’s no forced choice between SEO and PPC; each should be pursued to the extent that it yields a satisfactory ROI. For most companies, that will usually result in doing both on an ongoing basis.
SEO for all…
For starters, every company with a website needs to do search engine optimization to at least some degree. Investing in a well-designed website – but then failing to take the necessary steps to ensure that the major search engines will find the site in response to likely queries – simply makes no economic sense.
Think of the search engines as giving you (in effect) a free listing in the world’s only universal directory, under dynamic “categories” that are precisely the terms that the market uses in thinking about a product like your company’s. SEO, then, is simply a set of steps for structuring both your visible content and certain technical aspects of your site’s pages so as to maximize the value of that listing. Ideally, it will lead the engines to list your company higher (earlier) than your competitors in the listings produced in response to a relevant search.
If your site features dense “meaty” content that’s rich in your relevant keywords, you’re most of the way there. Your webmaster can do the rest by following the guide in our White Paper, “Best Practice Methods for Driving Qualified Web Traffic”. Where it gets tricky is that nothing about SEO stands still over time: certainly not the search engines’ algorithms, possibly not even the terms the market uses for your product type. This has led many clients to sign up for an ongoing SEO service such as eMagine’s, and to sleep better at night knowing that serious experts are on their case.
PPC for most…
Unlike SEO, Pay Per Click advertising isn’t a free ride; you bid on the keywords you think are relevant, and pay when a viewer clicks on your ad. (The good news is that you don’t pay for all those uninterested viewers who may see your ad, but don’t visit.) That makes the case for PPC more situation-dependent: while most keyword “markets” are still relatively cheap, some have become so competitive that it may no longer be possible to generate a return sufficient to cover the high per-click cost. Every situation is unique, and needs to be evaluated on its own merits.
To do that – and to learn the key ingredients for developing a successful PPC program – you may want to take a look at our PPC White Paper. While the search engines have no particular interest in making SEO simple, they’ve gone out of their way to make PPC easy …even for beginners. But despite that, there’s no getting around the fact that developing and maintaining an effective PPC campaign takes a major time commitment. If you’d rather not saddle your staff with that burden, no problem; you’ll simply be joining the host of B2Bs who choose to outsource their PPC campaign management to the professionals …such as those at eMagine.
