PPC vs SEO

I often have people ask me what they should focus their energies on - PPC or SEO. Is one better than the other? Where will they get the best return?

We did our own PPC/SEO competition on Friday when Alicia and Robyn decided to have a friendly arm wrestling competition:

The funny part is - the match ended in a tie! I even watched to make sure Alicia didn’t break out any black hat techniques!

Back to the PPC vs. SEO question - this one is a tie as well! You should spend some time working on both forms of marketing for your business. A good marketing plan should encompass several marketing channels, in order to keep a steady stream of traffic coming in. PPC can kick start traffic to a new website, and it helps you get exposure for areas that are difficult to rank organically for. SEO is a long term strategy, but getting those links on other sites will eventually yield free traffic coming to your site.

In addition, it’s inevitable that from time to time, the search engines will update their ranking algorithm, which means your rankings may dip or your cost per clicks may rise. If you’re only doing SEO, how will you cope when all your traffic goes away? If you’re only doing PPC, will you have a backup plan if all your cost per clicks go up by 20%? Diversify your marketing and you’ll be able to weather the storm much better!