Despite the fact that SEO and PPC are both prongs of digital marketing, and both closely related to search engines, they are quite different in how they operate.
Worse, there is quite a bit of misunderstanding surrounding each of these channels, although both can be beneficial to many online businesses. Here’s a high level view on both.
How SEO Works (Plus the Benefits)
SEO, which stands for search engine optimization, is one of the most effective digital marketing channels of all and most marketing insiders say it offers the highest ROI of all.
In a nutshell, when you engage in SEO, you are changing aspects of your website that make it more likely to appear in the organic search results for specific, target keywords and search terms.
The factors on your website (of which there are 200 or more) are called ranking factors or ranking signals. Some of these are content (in various forms), meta data, link structure, speed, security, and other technical factors.
When you “optimize” these ranking signals, Google will see your website as an authority for specific, related keywords, index it more favorably, and make it easier for users to find your website in the organic search results.
Since a huge deal of online sales are still driven by search engines, search engine optimization is one of the most effective digital marketing channels for reaching new leads and generating sales.
The other thing about SEO is that, even though the results are slow to generate a head of steam, they compound on each other, and what you pay for will get results farther down the line.
One more item to address here is that SEO is one of the only marketing channels that eCommerce businesses in restricted industries can participate in, which makes it highly sustainable for the largest number of businesses.
How eCommerce PPC Works (and Benefits)
In eCommerce PPC, instead of optimizing ranking factors, you bid on keywords that will get your paid listings to show up in the sponsored slots at the top (and sometimes bottom) of the search engine results pages.
Basically, it works like this. You do keyword research, figure out what your target audience is looking for, draft some ad copy, bid on those keywords, and then wait for impressions and clicks.
Hopefully, users will click on your listings (which you will then pay for) and the person that clicks through will buy something through your website, justifying the expense of the campaign.
There are some advantages associated with PPC advertising, and one of the main ones is that it doesn’t take a long time to get started. With proper targeting, you can start returning a profit within a matter of days.
At the same time, pay-per-click advertising is off the table for some businesses that are in what Google calls restricted industries. These businesses cannot launch paid search campaigns.
And so, despite the fact that eCommerce PPC services can be effective at driving revenue and increasing conversion rates, it’s only accessible to some businesses.
Also, many eCommerce ventures choose to work with providers of eCommerce PPC services to return the highest profit on ad spend by leveraging data driven campaign optimizations.
Hiring a Specialist for SEO or eCommerce PPC Services
Arguably, the best way to get your money’s worth out of either of these digital marketing channels is to hire a specialist.
It can be expensive to hire a partner for search engine optimization or for eCommerce PPC services, but doing so can help you avoid some of the more expensive mistakes that beginners can make.
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