SEO or PPC more important?

Everyday I have the privilege of speaking to small business owners about their business and marketing goals. They all want the same thing: results!

Yesterday a fellow entrepreneur asked me, “What is more effective SEO or PPC? The answer is simple: it depends on timing.

For those of you that don’t know the difference between SEO and PPC, let me take a moment to explain how it works.

Google’s entire mission is to make all the world's information available in an instant.

Google is a search engine and their  entire mission is to make all the world's information available in an instant. They did a pretty good job at it and that is why when someone is looking, for example, for a custom suit or a new office chair they Google it.

You may have even found this article by Googling the words “Is SEO or PPC more important?” No, I didn't just add that there so that it ranks on Google :) Ok, back to what I told my friend.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is great if you are looking for long term results and you don’t have a huge budget. You want to make sure that you are on the first page of Google for the most important words and you don’t want to have to pay every time someone clicks on your listing.

Everything that is free comes at a price.

Everything that is free comes at a price. It sounds like an oxymoron but it’s true; everything has a price. Further, sometimes things that are free cost more than things that are not free. But, that is a topic for another article.

PPC stands for Pay Per Click and Google’s advertising program called Google AdWords is a great platform to drive traffic to your website. You only pay for traffic when the person clicks and goes to your website and you can easily get to the top of any search by having the highest bid and the most relevant ad.

Its simple and fast and you can get people who are  qualified to quickly buy your products.  It has become much more complicated these days, however. Google had an algorithm for PPC just like it has for SEO and you need to understand the game to win it. You need to factor in CTR, Relevancy, History, Bid and much more and after all that you need to be on top of your competitors to make sure they don’t outsmart you. That is for every keyword that you are bidding more.

There are people that bid on thousands of keywords, its very complex and there are plenty of software applications that help you manage your PPC account.

The question is which is better for a small business that is looking to generate leads. Any SEO guy will tell you that you should stick with SEO and stay away from PPC and the PPC guy will tell you that SEO is waste of time, your efforts will just get messed up after Google changes its algorithm.

My opinion after servicing over 1000 clients and spending over 10,000 hours on managing PPC accounts and working on SEO tactics is that you need both to win in both the short term and the long term. They each play a key role in making your business successful.

If you are testing the waters, PPC is always the best way to start. SEO takes time and you will not be able to properly test what keywords will convert best using SEO. Once you understand what keywords give you the best ROI, then it’s time to launch you SEO campaign and drive traffic using only the most important words that give you the ROI.

Keep in mind that SEO takes time. No, really,  I said that because it really takes a lot of time and you need to start your campaign even before you know your keywords. You might be thinking to yourself, “How can I run an SEO campaign and not have keywords selected? Isnt SEO all about keywords?” NO! Its not! It’s about authority,  it’ss about influence, its about adding value!

Google’s goal is to add value to its users: your potential clients. When you help Google do that, then Google wants to put you up front. You need to become valuable in Google’s eyes. Yes, they have many eyes. Those eyes are the spiders that crawl around the internet and look for meat. Your value is their meat so don’t leave it in the oven for too long otherwise it will taste like crap.

Understanding how to add value to your clients should be your first goal. Once you understand that, you can create content and put it out there. At the same time you run a few ad campaigns and figure out the best keywords to use and make sure you guide Google in the right direction once it trusts your value!

So what is more important? They both are! You just need to pay attention to the timing of both because they’re different and require separate habits of care.Now go out market yourself in a smart way so you can actually measure your ROI and turn a profit.

What is your opinion? Feel free to comment in the box below, I would love to hear your feedback about SEO, PPC or anything else! 

BIO: Joe Apfelbaum is the CEO and co-founder of digital marketing agency Ajax Union. He is a public speaker, certified Google Trainer, and published business author. Joe enjoys speaking and writing about a broad range of business topics in his seminars, webinars and articles. Joe is a member of the Board of Directors of the Entrepreneurs Organization in Brooklyn, a group with over 11,000 CEO’s and a contributing member of the INC Business Owners Council, a community of the fastest growing companies in the United States. Joe is proud of all his accomplishments, but most of all he is proud of his successful foodie wife and beautiful four kids.