A Tale of 2 WAHMs

Some say SEO is a better marketing tactic. Some say PPC is what you need to get into to succeed. Neither one of them is right. It’s all about what you are most comfortable with, and what your budget can handle.

For several years I’ve been heavily involved in SEO. Paying for search engine listings is not my cup of tea. That doesn’t mean I’m totally against PPC - it just means I prefer SEO. So let me explain the differences, and why you shouldn’t let a guru tell you how to run your business.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

We’ll start with this because it’s my favorite. The goal of SEO is to make any given page on your site appear before other pages in search engine results for a certain keyword phrase. For example, my candle site’s home page can be found on Google for the term “Soy wax candles” (and if you want to steal this one, go ahead - it took me 2-3 years to rank for that term!). I have pages all over Idea Queen that rank on the first page for their specific terms.

Is it hard work? Absolutely! Does it happen overnight? Not a chance! Does it require continuous work? You bet! Nothing in SEO is guaranteed. Just because you *think* you’ll rank for a certain term, doesn’t mean you will. Where your page sits today might not be where it sits tomorrow. Heck at any given time your entire site could disappear! Probably not if you are playing by the rules, but you get my point. It’s hard work, and may or may not pay off. What’s worse, you have to wait weeks or even months to find out!

PPC (Pay Per Click)

There are lots of gurus that use this form of marketing for many reasons. It’s not even close to free, and can actually be VERY expensive. The idea behind PPC is just like it sounds - you put up ads with an ad network (Google Adwords is the largest), and only pay when your ad is clicked.

It’s not a guaranteed way of pulling in traffic either, but it’s a bit more stable. You have the ability to immediately rank for certain terms (unlike SEO), and multiple versions of that term (unlike SEO, where if you want to do well you need to stick to a main keyword phrase).

The downside to PPC (other than cost) is it’s work too. It sounds simple to just throw up and ad, then pay for the traffic you get. But there really is more work to that. You have to test which ads get more clicks and better conversion. You have to search for keywords (the more the better!). You have to track, test, track, and test some more. Google may be the largest, but it’s only ONE ad network. You have to do the same thing over for MSN, Yahoo (aka Overture), and any others. Where as with SEO if you build your pages and site right, you are going to show up in ALL search engines regardless.


So which one is right? PPC or SEO? Well, they both are. Not together - oh no! You need to focus on ONE for the most part, or else you are going to spread yourself too thin. Now there are cases where you can use both (for example, you focus on SEO but have new holiday pages which need to be promoted NOW, so you use PPC). But for the most part, you need to focus on ONE.

To find the best marketing method, ask yourself the following questions:

- How large is my advertising budget, if any?
- Do I need immediate income (PPC) or can it wait (SEO)?
- Do I have time to learn SEO? (Yes this is a big one!)
- Can I write lots of quality content (SEO), or just good ads (PPC)?
- Can I put in the time needed to seek out incoming links (SEO)?

There’s much more to think about when deciding, but those are the main questions. I do suggestion you give each a very close look, and maybe even try your hand at them both. Just be sure you don’t let your costs get out of control with PPC, or you’ll be done before you even start!

Good luck!

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