SEO or PPC – What’s Better?

I’m sure you’ve heard this before and you will most certainly hear it time and time again – SEO is dead or Google Ads doesn’t work it’s a waste of money.

Well, the truth is this.  They both work, and they both work well if they are done correctly.

There’s a reason why both exist and they can work independently from each other or they can work together to really boost your sales.

The internet is free, but get to page ONE of organic search results or the top of the page using Google Ads will not be free.  Google Ads is Google’s primary source of revenue and without it, Google will cease to exist. They are an advertising agency and provide a service that has enabled them to dominate the internet on a global scale.

So unless they really screw up big, they aren’t going anywhere.  We either have to embrace this truth or continue to use old marketing methods, like using the Yellow Pages,  that rarely work and won’t get you any sales.

SEO or PPC – So what’s the difference?

Moz.com has a great article called What is SEO that you can read in more detail if you like, but it is the practice of increasing the quantity or quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results.

The goal is to get as much traffic to your website as possible without having to pay excessive amounts of money to get it.  If you have the ability to do this on your own or in-house than that may be the cheapest way to get your website more traffic.  There are of course other alternatives like our agency or other agencies you trust to do the work for you.

Once you get that traffic flowing to your website it will inevitably be the cheapest form of getting leads you can imagine.  We have experienced leads that are less than $5/lead when you even factor in our agency fee. If you can manage to tackle this huge feat on your own then all you’ve spent is time. Your leads will be FREE.

Optimizing your website in this way allows your website to show up in the top 3 positions in Google Maps, called the Map Pack.  Even if your business doesn’t have a location that people can visit, you still need it for rankings, leads and to house all of your awesome 5-star reviews you should be getting, right?

There are various techniques and procedures that go into building an SEO framework and that conversation is for another day.  This article is simple lay out the facts that both Google Ads and SEO work and they work well.

Google Ads is a Pay Per Click service, formerly known as Google Adwords.  The concept behind this service is to give you, the advertiser, an opportunity to advertise your services right at the top of search results.  Anytime someone types in a search query that is related to your service, your ad will show up with the hope they click on it. If they click on it, it will take them to your website or landing page and you pay for that click.  

The better you are at optimizing Google Ads and understanding how to get quality leads the better your conversion rates will be, the more leads you get for less.  You will be competing for the top 3 or 4 positions by bidding on your chosen keywords for that campaign. 

The 1st position doesn’t mean you are going to get all the leads.  It does mean, however, that you will be paying the most money out of any other advertiser bidding unless you have an amazing ad copy and your quality score is between 8 and 10.  Google will actually discount your bids if you are providing great content and people are converting often. Google wants this to happen, as it’s their entire mission to provide the user with the best experience possible.

In summary, they both work and they both work well.  One costs more than the other and one is a short term lead generation strategy and the other is long term.  

Can you guess which one it is?

Here at Clean Green SEO, we focus on long term results first.  We start with a solid foundation, and a fast loading, high converting website.  Then we work on all of your SEO first, so that you can start to really grow your online presence. This can take 3 mths, 6 mths or even a year to get to the top of search results, depending on your area and competition.  From there, the focus is maintaining that position. 

While we move through this, we will set up a Google Ads campaign so that you can still get leads coming in right away.  We call this accelerating your lead flow. While we do the hard work in the back end, you’re still getting leads coming in.  Once we start to see organic results really working, we can throttle back the PPC spend and start to sit back and watch the magic happen (Well, you can sit back, we’ll be mashing keys on our keyboards).

We do have clients that try to maximize their lead flow online by using both methods all the time and it really does work! 

BUT, you have to have that solid foundation built first.

Start with SEO and use Google Ads in the interim to keep the phone ringing and your trucks moving.  This we find, in our experience, to be the best possible long term solution for any concrete floor coating businesses out there.

Looking for an agency to handle your SEO or PPC? Click the link to learn more about Floor Coating Marketers.