PPC vs. SEO: What’s Best For Your Business?

When it comes to Google ads, the thing to keep in mind is that they’re very quick. You can set them up and get started getting traffic pretty much right away— certainly within the first month, you’ll start to see some results. You can target any area you want, so it doesn’t matter if you are physically located there or not. You can buy traffic anywhere you wish. It is a bit expensive, especially if you’re not watching your costs and optimizing for price, and it’s specifically appropriate for things that are known, for example, a plumber or plumbing service, or, you know, water heater replacement, things that people know about. Everyone knows about water heaters. Everyone knows about plumbers. If you have some new fancy product, or some brand new business that no one’s ever heard of, and you want to get the word out, this is not the medium for you.

In fact, the next topic, Facebook ads, that’s where you want to be, because that’s more of a push program where you’re going to be pushing messages out that people are going to stumble across. In the cases of those new businesses or new products, that’s usually where we push people.

So, Facebook ads can still be very fast. You can get results within the first month. The cost is more reasonable usually then AdWords as far as your cost per action, but if you don’t properly set your campaigns up, they can also still burn quite a bit of money, so you need to be careful there. They’re a little bit better for more long-term decisions— maybe something where someone’s going to consider it over time, rather than make an impulse buy— usually that’s a better idea.

And then, SEO is going to be even longer-term usually because it involves building out a website, getting traffic to that site and then getting traffic in the search results. That’s not something that happens overnight. Usually, it takes (rule of thumb) around 90 days to start to see some traction with a campaign like that— so if you’re looking for something tomorrow, that’s not the right space for you. However, it’s very, cost-effective over time. The costs are front loaded when you’ve got to build out the site and things, but then over time, those costs wane off and it becomes a very cost-effective way to do your marketing.

So, I hope this helps you to understand a little bit of the differences between the three types. Thank you for watching this video and we’ll see you next time.