SEO or Paid Ads

The answer to the question is pretty simple ... it depends on what it costs you for a conversion. If you are paying more for your ads than you make, it really doesn't make much sense to advertise!

Don't forget to also factor in your time as an expense. Making $1 per sale profit after ad expenses doesn't pay for your time to process the order (or even manage the ad campaign). So, if you want to make $25 per hour and it takes you 15 minutes to process an order, you need to add an extra $6.25 as a processing cost for each order.

We don't even bother with SEO-only niches anymore. If we can't make some profit with advertising, we definitely aren't going to take the time to implement SEO. But, if a niche IS profitable with ads, we'll typically start working on the slow, uphill SEO climb, as well (free traffic is always better than paid).

Start with paid ads and slowly transition into SEO and having a large e-mail list of prospects/buyers. You'll probably be stuck paying for ads forever, though.

Straight to the point.....BOTH!


Hope that helps
Mirko

===> SEO. You can practically force feed search engines eating from your palm, if done right.

And you can save a lot of money. With PPC you are at the mercy of bidding wars with ridiculous CPC.

It appears you have a BUDGET to spend on traffic

If so, why not place small orders with paid traffic specialists and see which one(s) produce the best results

Scale up your campaign once you've found the right seller(s)

PRO TIP: It helps tremendously if you OPTIMIZE your conversion pages - these are the pages your paid traffic ultimately ends up on and which actually make you money.

Do this AFTER you've found the right traffic specialist

You can also outsource conversion optimization

I know which method will get the best results. The question is do I want to spend the money to get to the point where I would continue to spend. And, as suggested, there will need to be some testing and more money to see which ones perform the best.

And I will not be giving up on SEO. With the possible exception of Neil Patel I'm not familiar with any SEO guru who doesn't advocate some form of monetary investment in link building. Expenses aside, in the majority of instances SEO will bring me to a place close to or below the fold. In any case, I appreciate all your responses.

Just to add some more insight into my thinking: SEO is Dead and Always Was..

Google, by the way, has some ant-trust issues pending. I wonder if the paid ad vs. legitimate SEO ranking success might be one them.

Paid ads. I'm a big fan of paid ads

we can see results quick

Awesome

Thank you. I am a fan of Brian Dean. I apologize for leaving him out. I'm sure there are others, but I'm just not aware of them.

Here's another thought that might satisfy both interests:

Back in earlier days Google had their ads on a sidebar on the right of the page and, if I can recall correctly, on a panel at the bottom of the page.

That's something I could live with. Memo to John Mueller..

all depends if you are patient or not.
Patience is a key, but if you have some budget I would prefer paid ads
If you dont, then learn everything from a scratch

Continual SEO together with occasional Ads should be the best.

Paid ads, for those who don't work with a restricted budget.

Both are Great Way....
if you want to quick result than you go with paid Ads but SEO is evergreen technique in Search Engine Marketing.

Well i think paid ads are the way to go but if you have free time why not to worl with seo also ? Why to lose time on tv ,social.media when you can work at your dream

Organic and paid both techniques are necessary to build a sturdy and powerful online reputation. Instead of choosing between the two of them, try leveraging both as both of them are equally important and impactful.

It takes more times to make money in SEO, so in the first stage you can use paid ad.

SEO is a long term process and other paid marketing is one time, when you spend your money.

If you are looking for instant results then Ads will be the better option for you to move with. But it matters only when you gain from the investment. Else otherwise your investment could go vain. My opinion is SEO as it produces long lasting results even though it is long term process.

Think of using both to obtain the same goal. Paid ads to a squeeze page then use your leads as a means of putting them through your blog/customer experience. If your blog is well siloed then your customer experience and SEO should be good. Use emails to your leads to drive them through your blog posts with the aim of building trust and later on sales

According to me.


If website is brand new and want to start earning from starting then i will choose advertisement along with SEO link building work ...... Because once we achieve place in search engines then no need of advertisement.


SEO is forever thing means once you got good position then you can be there for long time by manage online reputation but with advertisement you are on top only till you are paying and after that you are on no where (May be).


So i will prefer both according to situation and status of website.

Both are good. If you have money then you can use Paid ads and if you are interested in long term marketing then you can use SEO. You can read my full article.

SEO- or Search Engine Optimization- can help your content rank higher and longer. Organic content found via search engines is more likely to be clicked on and trusted by audiences, more effective for local searches, and can grow your online presence for longer. PPC -- or Pay-Per-Click -- on the other hand, requires you to spend ad money to get your content in front of an audience.

Here are some facts about both SEO and PPC:

PPC

The top 3 paid advertising spots get 46% of the clicks on the page. According to Power Traffick, the top three links on a search engine results page (SERP) capture almost half of all traffic for that keyword. This data supports the PPC method as it involves buying ad space at the top of the SERP.

More than 615 million devices use Adblock. As a consumer, Adblock is amazing: it stops all those eerily targeted ads from popping up on your Facebook feed. However, as a marketer, it can be frustrating to invest in PPC if huge numbers of your target consumers will never see your ad.

Google's algorithm updates don't affect PPC. While not a stat per se, a big benefit of PPC is that it's immune to Google's changing SERP ranking algorithm. In 2018, Google reported that it had updated its algorithm 3,234 times! If you're using the SEO method, you have to adjust your content optimization to rank better according to the updated algorithm requirements.

75% say it's easier to find what they're looking for from paid ads. The reason the first page of search results -- especially the few hits -- get the vast majority of clicks is due to the combination of ease of use and finding what the searcher is looking for. Bidding on target keywords through PPC accomplishes both of these needs: the paid ads are easy to find at the top of the SERP and they answer the question of the searcher.

SEO

Nearly 80% of users ignore paid ads in search results. People tend to prefer organic links more than paid ones.

SEO drives 30% of traffic, and 20% of revenue. SEO ROI accumulates over time as content creators establish authority and visibility. Prospects often visit a website more than once before filling out a form or making a purchase, so ranking higher for more keywords increases the likelihood of conversions over time.

36.2% of consumers recognize links that are paid advertisements but don't click on them. Many search users aren't able to differentiate between paid ads and organic links -- in fact, only half of the searchers correctly identify ads. In spite of this, consumers are still preferring the organic links over the PPC ones.

Organic SEO is about 5.66 times better than paid search ads. HubSpot's co-founder, Brian Halligan, ardently believes in an organic-first strategy for its longevity and strong conversion performance. According to HubSpot's inbound marketing philosophy, paid outbound marketing interrupts audiences with outreach they don't want, whereas organic optimization draws in consumers with content they love.

Suppose if you want to promote your Vacuum Cleaners business then you have two option one is SEO and another is PPC.

Most people I see that seem to pay for ads don't do so well.

Paying for traffic can cost more if you don't know what you're doing. Although SEO is more expensive than it was before it is still the better option.

You won't spend as much money and you will learn a valuable skill which can serve you for the rest of your life.

You have the answer brother! money is the cause of all these evil. Google should appear on the list of corrupt people. It explains why paid ads will always appear at the top of the search.

Start with paid ads and blogging .

SEO is better, safer, and long-lasting, though comes with a lot of challenges especially for the newbie. Google prefers that all links should be generated organically while links bought will subject your blog to a severe penalty from Google. In that regard, it's better and safer to concentrate on SEO (on-page and off-page) while you forget about the black hat way of building traffic.

SEO needs patience and lots of hard work to pay off you residual traffic. However, paid sources need some budget and experience too. if you are new to it then you cannot able to make most out of your paid campaigns.

SEO and paid ads are both important to a huge extent. SEO requires consistency and gives long-term results if performed correctly, so both are equally useful and should not be prioritized over the other.

Everyone and their brother is hoping SEO will be their claim to fame. The truth is SEO is a thing of the past. Google Adwords is known as King their Paid Ads will always take priority over SEO efforts. Find quality keywords and track conversions that will laser focus finding customers for your niche.

In Google Web Stories WordPress Plugin for More Traffic from Search Engine Journal you can find out more about a plugin that could help. Official release supposed to be coming out at the end of the month.

It depends on your budget at present time, if you have no problem related to budge the rational ways would be starting with PPC, and gradually start with SEO.

There's no reason not to do both. That is if you can afford ads. A lot of people can't afford ads so organic growth is all they're left with which is fine. Just because organic SEO takes time doesn't mean it's not worth it. Organic SEO has a snowball effect over time. One day you wake up and you have an unstoppable flood of traffic.

If you are new venture and have enough money to invest on add then go for it, but side by side don't forget to SEO. Because the ad will only work until you have money. That's why SEO in helpful.

I agree with doing both. In my opinion, get everything setup for SEO. Then work on running the paid ads. SEO is a great way to get traffic, but often takes time. Running Paid ads while you get your links and ranks up will help and should also serve as a learning experience. I find many aspects of PPC and SEO can be intertwined and you can learn from both.

SEO is a long term process and it needs time and some investment as well. But if you want quick money then you might go for Ads. For my personal project, I always do SEO and if I see it taking a lot of time to rank a hard keyword then I start paid ads. Once I get some good clicks then my site automatically ranks Google top page.

I think that these have to be useful and adding value to the post.

They say that 20% of your efforts will get you 80% of the results. Paid ads should be 19% of that 20% and 1% should be devoted to SEO.

Niches that have less SEO competition is worth it.

Niches like "internet marketing" and "make money online" should not even be touched and focused on PAID ads only. That's my opinion.

i concur with George Troy, if they sell I buy them for a more extensive review, if they're duds I dump them.

Hello, this just goes hand in hand. You need both, when you first start out your authority blog or site you can kickstart the traffic with paid ads.


And when you blog grows naturally, the seo effect will start too. Some sort of both things together is for example fb marketing. You can do that without buying fb ads and get targeted leads!


Mirko

Yes I agree. but it totally depends on your niche and also the amount of time you dedicate to promote something. But in general, paid ads are always on top if you really know the game and you are sure that you can become profitable by what you are offering
I hope that helps

Exactly. I do both and I see results in short terms. As for me SEO and paid ads go hand in hand and they're more efficient if implemented together. I've been doing this for long enough to know that this is true and paid ads are incomplete without an SEO campaign. I learned much about content creating, also from similarcontent.com but not only. Many people choose only one because this can get expensive, but it's better to invest a little bit more and to have good results rather than to invest less and get a lower outcome.

You've to learn both SEO and ADS to strategize on how you make a deal/ bid with your potential clients. With that way, you will earn what you've worked and it will minimize the amount of money you should spend in every ads you're going to make but it will maximize the amount you will earn.

We find having both helps. While we work a lot on our SEO that takes time and having paid ads is the quick way in front of the competition. Also GMB is great for putting your business up for local customers

you can easily start with paid ads and then work on SEO and then build a massive e-mail list of real buyers buyers.Otherwise, you'll be paying for ads forever, though.

SEO is a long term process and also has long term benefits. But you have to be patient because if you think that you build a site and that site will rank over night, then you should quit SEO, and pay paid advertisement. But here is one thing to keep in mind, if you do not know about the paid advertisement, then appoint some expert for it. Paid advertisements are like leeches if they start sucking your money once they are pocketed.

Interesting article in Bloomberg 7/14/20: Google Search Upgrades Make It Harder For Websites to Win Traffic

Here's another interesting article from Reuters: U.S. and states' Google antitrust probe nears finish line

You might also be interested in this definition of a monopoly from Investopia:
A monopoly refers to when a company and its product offerings dominate a sector or industry. Monopolies can be considered an extreme result of free-market capitalism in that absent any restriction or restraints, a single company or group becomes large enough to own all or nearly all of the market (goods, supplies, commodities, infrastructure, and assets) for a particular type of product or service. The term monopoly is often used to describe an entity that has total or near-total control of a market.

I don't have an easy answer and, frankly, I haven't given it much thought until recently. Google has almost always been there and even with all the traumatic algorithm changes and other difficulties it's not easy to switch to, say, Bing or Duckduckgo and they don't have Google's depth.

I just remember that the internet was a U.S. government project that changed the world and cyberspace was free for everyone. How one navigates it and whether one company should be overlord for most, if not all, is another matter.

Google has made many valuable and useful contributions to life online. Still, considering all of Google's various enterprises I think adjusting how they deal with their paid ads within their search engine should be a topic of discussion.

Eh, I'd say it's a toss up depending on what you are trying to accomplish, in the first place. SEO accomplishes a lot more things than simple conversion and won't necessarily involve payment if you do it yourself. Whereas paid ads will cost you money no matter what.



Of course, paid ads is essentially paid traffic anyway, so one could argue why not just buy website traffic directly? It would certainly cut the middle man out of the equation. Google, Facebook, and services like Maxvisits.com, fiverr, and other social networks offer this in one form or another anyway.



I think the main point that needs to be considered, though, is what you are getting for what you are spending. If paid ads gets you more ROI than SEO and faster conversion, you might as well go with it. However, it can also be argued that not having a solid SEO foundation can leave a pretty big weakness for your site

For Long Term SEO is the best option and If you need instant result then SEM is the best option.

Yes, need to be used both with a specific % ratio out of 100% of our work for traffic, a new website with 65% paid, and 35% SEO will help to generate traffic, and decreaase the paid once you satisfied with SEO work.

I am also using both together for my business better sales.

I like the most SEO.

I am also using both together for my business.

both, use ppc while your seo fills out

You have to use both techniques, SEO is great you need more time and investment . But if you do it right this is a gold mine. How ever if you want quick results or sales, you need to use paid ads,

SEO and Ads are completely different and the results will depend on many variables. As a writer on Forbes, the results I get back are more SEO juice (so helps build my DA and authority as well as driving some traffic back). But an ad would be more direct and targeted. Ideally, both is good but if budget is limited I'd recommend ads over SEO as it takes so long to build up and can be more expensive than ads.

SEO and paid ads are very important for digital marketing..

Do both, obviously. Try to get both to where they are profitable. And DON'T rely on either one, exclusively, for your business.

SEO is good, but it is vulnerable because a google algorithm tweak can eliminate your site from google search results overnight (depending on what methods you've been using).

PPC is less vulnerable, but fluctuations in the cost of ads could potentially hurt you in the future, especially if you're in a niche where advertisers (competition for ads) are growing faster than demand (people searching in your niche). This will lead to higher and higher prices for ads.

Another option is to build your own legitimate, engaged, audience through a list. That's not really vulnerable to anything. No one can take that away from you.

My approach is paid ads first.

Find what works and then build content around the working stuff in the background. If I keep SEO in the background I can enjoy it more and not get frustrated when I can't achieve particular rankings quickly enough (or Google demotes me from page 1 to page 20).

Paid ads cost a lot of money, but I'd rather have more time, than more money and no time to enjoy it.

I totally agree. And I'm sure it's easier and safer to use paid advertising.
There are few real SEO specialists and there are no guarantees to get the result. Thank you for this topic!

I suggest start with paid ads and slowly transition into SEO and having a large e-mail list of prospects/buyers. Continual SEO together with occasional Ads should be the best.

To me, SEO is a natural process while buying ads is artificial . So what is the best option for you? A natural process or buying artificial products?

My answer would be always SEO first, then Paid Ads, with SEO if you could get long tail keywords on page 1 you could save a great sum of money for the Paid ads.

Yes of course SEO would need to invest more time and less money, vice versa for paid ads.

both are good long term.

my opinion is to do SEO because it helps to completely optimize your website and you also get traffic for a long time but in paid add you get traffic but your website will not optimized.

Believe it or not most people don't click on the ads. People click on the SEO websites more. I was wondering the same thing at one time.

Studies indicates that the first 5 SEO searches on the first page gets over 67% of the clicks alone.

Paid ads get around 20% of the clicks.

In my opinion, it's always worth investing in SEO.

First off, I think we all know that organic search results will get more clicks than Google Ads - that's no shocker. But let's imagine, for arguement's sake, that you had a limitless e-commerce marketing budget and you wanted to dump a ton into PPC ads. It still wouldn't do much to contribute to your business's brand uniqueness. SEO does!

Yes, the primary goal of SEO is to rank higher. But it'll require that you produce a consistent stream of high-quality content. In doing so, you'll simulatenously be illustrating your expertise and reliability as a source of dependable information in your line of work.

Paid ads are a quick solution, but when you run a small[er] online business, using your own words, your own voice, and your own image to communicate with your audience can be immensely beneficial. Imagine the different reactions you'll get from leads when they visit your site and see your face and read your words - as opposed to seeing shutterstock images and reading copy that comes off as 'artificial'.

Bottom line: SEO does more than just generate traffic, leads, and sales. It helps you build up your brand awareness - something that you'd end up paying quite a bit to achieve through paid ads.

I am testing out paid ads, if anyone has a good adwords beginner guide, please let me know!

Paid Ads is the easy way out, but can be very expensive. SEO takes time before you see any results depending on the keyword competition.

For long term solution and save money on ads, Go for SEO. But start with ads to get quick results.

SEO and paid ads are both equally responsible for creating a powerful online reputation. Organic and paid traffic has a huge impact when leveraged simultaneously. One should start paid ads from significant but easy-to-manage social campaigns like Facebook and Google ads to understand its impact better. One simply can't choose between the two. Choosing both is equally important for an above-par performance.

It depends on your marketing strategy and objectives.

Implementing the right PPC campaigns will get you short-term results. You have to pay to play in the Ads arena.

Applying the right SEO strategies, incrementally, can yield positive results over time.

if you want instant traffic or sale then you can start with paid ads. but simultaneously if you focus on organic seo, it will give you lifelong results

IF you CPA is so high that you generate a negative ROI, try content marketing + SEO and retargeting ads for people that get close to the convertion action.

Of course SEO. Paid add will rank when you pay. Stop paid and rank down. To keep rank a long time you have to implement white hat SEO.

I would definitely opt for using paid ads initially to test which keywords convert best with your audience. Implementing SEO is a long term strategy which should only be used on keywords that actually convert for you.

Once you've figured out which keywords convert well and generate a good ROI for you with sufficient traffic, start implementing SEO with the keywords you found. Once your website is ranking well and getting sufficient traffic, start optimizing for conversions.

When you maximize conversions and revenue, give yourself a raise by repeating the process with new keywords. At some point it would benefit you to capture emails of these targeted leads that are coming to your website so you can follow up, educate and eventually sell additional products or services to your starving audience.

I think both are complementary to each other you need to work on both. SEO is something that is a must for every website. And ads are more focused on transactional queries. So for the overall growth of your business online you need to be good at both. As people are becoming more aware they trust to click on organic results.

IMO You should do both. Do paid ads until you can rank organically through SEO. Once you rank organically, you won't have to pay for ads.

Personally, paid ads but that's just me. I find it faster. However, you need to test, tweak and stick to a budget if possible.

SEO is a long term strategy and paid ads takes a lot of budget. If you really do have a lot of budget and want instant sales you can go for paid ads. and if you are tight on budget go for SEO

There is nothing like building a business for free.

Why not build a great website that ranks well for many keywords. Long tail keywords, short tail ones, and gain highly targeted traffic to your site. You will build an evergreen site that can last a lifetime.

All you need is a great SEO keyword tool. You will plug in a site idea and get a list of keywords related to your niche. If it s a niche you love, you will love to write about it and show off your expertise to the world. People will flock to your site who also share your same interests and your traffic and customers will begin to rise. You will make friends with other website owners inside your niche who will want you to maybe guest post and will share your links across their social media platforms or even email lists.

I am also using both together for my business.

Interesting on both! It's thought provoking.

This is a very typical question every one of us had in mind initially when we started with SEO and website traffic generation. But eventually, we get to a point where we understand that spending money on ads is a costly procedure, its a matter of fact that we can't spend more money than we make, so eventually, we tend to go for organic SEO.
However, Google does not let an ill-handled website with poor content, poor backlink, and poor authority website rank higher even if it's paid.
check it yourself, put a paid ad website on any SEO tool and check its keywords, content, and links. You'll get your answer.
Good Luck.

Start with paid ads for article after 2 months do SEO