What is the difference between SEO and PPC?

The main difference between Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay Per Click (PPC) is that traffic coming from SEO (organic) is free while traffic generated from PPC is not free (as the name implies you have to pay a cost per click).  This is also the reason why you may sometimes see the terms organic search engine listings and paid search engine listings (or Paid Search Advertising – PSA).

Both SEO and PPC are part of Search Engine Marketing (SEM) which is one of the tools you can use as part of your overall Internet Marketing campaign.

I will try to explain the other major differences between the two by using the following parameters: position in search results, cost, traffic potential, conversion and ease of use.

Organic Traffic vs. Paid Search Advertising

Position in Search Results

As you can see from the screenshot above you can expect to find PPC Ads above the organic results and on the sidebar.  Where exactly your ad will appear depends on a number of factors (i.e. the keywords you are targeting, keywords in your ad copy, keywords in your landing page and many more) but it’s either on top, on the sidebar or below the organic results.

Organic results can only appear in the middle of the page. Whether your listing will appear in the top positions or first pages this depends on how optimized your web site is both in terms of on-site and off-site SEO.

SEO: You can get first page positions if your web site is optimized for search engines

PPC: You can get your ad on the first page by paying a higher cost per click (CPC)

Cost

I have mentioned above that SEO traffic is free and PPC is paid and while this is absolutely true, you should understand that it needs a lot of effort and hard work to get free traffic from search engines. The competition is high for almost every keyword you can search and you really need to have a high quality web site and a great SEO plan to get one of the top 5 positions. There are no shortcuts despite what some “SEO” companies are trying to sell you.  If you are not familiar how search engines work or don’t know anything about SEO then the best way to get search engine traffic is to hire a SEO expert to do the work you.

On the other hand, Pay Per Click cost depends on a number of other factors. If we take for example the cost per click of advertising with the most popular PPC system, Google Adwords, then it depends on the popularity of the keyword, on the number of advertisers who want to use the particular keyword, the number of related web sites that have ad positions for the particular keyword and many more. If it sounds a bit complicated then it probably is despite the efforts made by Google to make the whole system easier to use.

The good news with PPC is that you only pay for the clicks your ad receives and not for the views. In addition, you can determine in advance your daily budget and pay no more than that and you can calculate an estimate of what is the average cost per click for the keywords you want to target. As you can see from the screenshot below the Google Keyword tool (which is part of Google Adwords) gives you an estimate for the CPC (cost per click) for each keyword.

SEO: Cost of SEO is indirect. You cannot pay to get to the first page but you may have to pay for SEO services if you cannot do SEO yourself.

PPC:  You pay only when people click on your ad.  You can use the Google keyword tool to calculate how much you can pay.

Traffic potential

Which method can bring more traffic to your web site, SEO or PPC? SEO (organic traffic) is more than PPC traffic so if you can manage to rank your web site for the keywords you want, you will get much more traffic than paying for those keywords. This is because when you are in one of the top 5 positions (according to statistics the majority of search traffic visits one of the top 5 web sites) you can expect to have a continuous flow of traffic 24×7 without having to pay anything (the actual volume of traffic depends on how popular a keyword is).

So, if you compare traffic and cost of first page positions for SEO traffic and PPC traffic, organic traffic is better. There are some studies suggesting that PPC ads get more clicks than organic but this also translates to a bigger cost.

If on the other hand it is very difficult to get first page positions for a keyword then paying for traffic may be your only option since second and third page positions will probably bring 0 or very little traffic.

SEO: Organic traffic is continuous as long as you are ranking in one of the top positions.

PPC: PPC ads can get more clicks but this means that you pay more.

Conversion

Which visitor is more likely to convert (i.e. make a purchase, register to a newsletter and in general response to call for action), someone coming from PPC Ads or from organic search? If your ads are highly targeted and optimized then a visitor from PPC is more likely to convert than a visitor coming from search.

The reason is that a web page can rank for different keywords (other than those initially intended) so the search visitor may not be looking exactly for the content (or product) presented in the particular page. On the other hand if you run a successful PPC campaign then you will only get clicks from visitors who are interested 100% in your content or products.

SEO: SEO traffic is better than other forms of traffic (i.e. social media) but in terms of conversion is not as good as PPC traffic.

PPC: Highly optimized keywords will generate more conversions but will cost more

Ease of use

Neither SEO nor PPC is easy to do if you don’t have the necessary knowledge and experience.  SEO is a process that takes a lot of time and effort. It may take months or even years to rank for specific terms or not rank at all!

On the hand, in order to get some good results with PPC and Adwords you either have to take a course or hire a PPC expert to help you or you will lose a few hundred dollars before you understand how it works.

The bottom line: PPC first and then SEO

The bottom line is that you need to use both PPC and SEO as part of your Internet Marketing campaign. PPC can bring you faster results so you can run a PPC campaign and test which keywords convert better and then try with SEO to rank for those keywords.

Use PPC when you have a high converting product and use SEO when you have a limited budget to spend on advertising.

SEO may take time but the results are (under some conditions) long lasting while with PPC when you stop paying for clicks, traffic will also stop.

What is the difference between SEO and SEM?

The difference between SEO and SEM is simply that Search Engine Optimization is part of Search engine marketing or Search marketing as it is widely known. Both processes aim in increasing visibility in search engines. SEO is about optimizing the web property to get better rankings in the search results while SEM goes beyond SEO. It involves other methods as well which can get you more search engine visitors like PPC advertising.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

I have explained before what is SEO and why is it important and I have also outlined what in my opinion are the most important SEO tips. For the purpose of doing a comparison between SEO and SEM I will re-state the definition of SEO so that it is clear for everybody what the difference between the two is.

What is SEO?

SEO is the process of optimizing your web site for the purpose of getting free traffic from search engines. An optimized web site is more easily understood by Search engine crawlers, so there are more chances of ranking higher in SERPS.

On-Site and Off-site SEO

There are 2 main pillars of SEO, what is called on-site SEO and off-site SEO. On-Site SEO are rules you can apply on your web site or blog so that it’s more search engine friendly. For example you need to use proper titles, good descriptions, well formatted URLs, correct use of H1, H2 and images and many more. You can read my version of the 15 on-site seo tips for beginners to get a good idea of how you can optimize your web site for search engines.

Off-site SEO refers to the process of getting votes from other web sites for the purpose of increasing your web site’s trust in the eyes of search engines. For beginners this may be confusing but try to think about it like a ranking system where the web site who has the most votes ranks higher. Votes in our case are links coming from other web sites to your site. That is also the reason why off-site SEO is referring to as link building.

To avoid any misunderstandings it’s not only a matter of how many links you have pointing to your website but also from where these links are coming and a number of other factors I am not going to cover now.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

Search Engine Marketing is over and above SEO but it’s only a subset of your overall Internet Marketing Strategy. The diagram below shows the relationship between Internet Marketing, SEM and SEO. As you can see there are many more ways to increase your web site’s traffic besides SEM and SEO.

What is SEM?

So, SEM is the marketing process with a goal of getting more visibility in search engines either by getting more free traffic (SEO) or paid traffic (Paid search advertising).

Through paid search advertising you essentially buy advertising space in the search engine results. So instead of trying to rank higher and get free traffic you pay to appear in front of the searches.

The most well-known advertising agency for PSA is Google Adwords. Through Google adwords you can get your ads appear in the Google search results and you pay only for the clicks on your ads. This is also the reason why the whole process is called Pay-per-click or PPC. Bing and Yahoo have a similar system but it not so successful and widely known as Adwords.

Importance of SEM Traffic

SEM traffic is considered the most important source of Internet traffic because it is targeted. It is widely accepted that people use the search engines to find a solution to a problem, an answer to their question or to learn how to do something. So when searches click on a web site from the search results or click on an ad, they are more likely to convert. The relevancy of the displayed web sites and ads makes SEM traffic more valuable than any of the other sources. Facebook and twitter are trying to optimize their advertising platforms to utilize targeted traffic but still traffic coming directly from search engines has a better ROI.