Which is the best? SEO or PPC?

I think SEO is better because it is not instant compared to PPC where you have to pay for it and the traffic that search engines can instantly suspected

Hi Josh,

Why waste time arguing?

They are both excellent methods of promoting your website, they both work well when properly executed. You do not need to choose one, or the other, best practice is to use both simultaneously. In fact, stats show that you get a great deal of synergy by employing both simultaneously.

If a keyword is worth ranking by SEO then it is likely worth advertising as well. One of the key advantages that PPC has over nearly all other forms of promotion, including SEO, is that you gather useful data very quickly. That data can then be used to inform your strategy for other promotional techniques, including SEO campaigns. Anyone trying to run an SEO campaign without the benefit of PPC campaign data is disadvantaged by that lack of data.

@Aarav,

I love having competitors that think like you.

@Nelapsi,

I often hear people refer to SEO as "free". Maybe to you it is free, but to me time is money.

I can always get more money, but time is a very limited resource. No matter what I try, I can never get more than 24 hours out of a day, so I always have to employ others to get more time onto a project. I do not have a limitless source of free labor. If you can please share where you, and others, that refer to SEO as "free", find all of that free labor I would appreciate it.

I agree. Its never wise to put all your eggs in one basket. Both sides have thier strengths and weaknesses:

PPC:
Pros: high level of control, with a little research you can fine-tune your bids to save $$$
Cons: Increasing % of bot clicks, newbs can configure it wrong and blow through $1000+ in a day

SEO:
pros: sites ranking high organically have that much more credibility in the eyes of visitors, is cheaper over the long term
cons: takes time, vulnerable to the whims of google

I agree Big Norm. I started using long tail keywords and got my cost down to a minimum. My mailing list grew much quicker and I was able to see what keywords were getting the best response and then incorporating them into my web text in turn improving my SEO.

I accept your reply that we can't do PPC for long time. But, SEO takes long time, If I need to sell my products within a week (for Christmas Deals, New year deals and like that), Have i to choose PPC or SEO?

:rolleyes: Tell that to all the people who brought SEO services and ended up tanking after Googles last major update.

Yeah.. I accept. penguin and panda won't affect, But if you do SEO perfectly, who will suffer you.. Its all based on our needs. SEO is mainly for traffic but PPC is mainly for Instant Sales.

Through both, we can get the ROI surely but the matter is how quickly we get it. Got it?

hey josh..

i think this discussion will takes some more days to get finished....anyway here is my contribution. It was already explained clearly what SEO and PPC is for in the earlier posts. Im just putting a conclusion here.
Actually SEO deserves when there is a need for long term ruling at SERP. SEO can do the best in keeping you at top for very long time so you can get your clients right to you throughout the days. If you are running a electronics or clothes like businesses you need to pick SEO to run your business its life long. And i can say that PPC is additional tag to SEO in promoting the online business. PPC needs more money that SEO needs. but there is an benefit from PPC which gives instant traffic thus sales. If you are running a online gifts shop or crackers shop or something that got sale seasonally and occasionally, PPC can help you the best.

So thats it a SEO and PPC are meant for. Hope this will help dude.

SEO is a slow process to push up your website on the top of search engine and its cost very little. and the second part PPC is very different than SEO,PPC give you results on Search Engine Instantly,but its cost is very high.

Well,i think PPC can be great for seeding content.That doesn't mean Seo is not best.but You will need to follow SEO best practices to try to get your site displayed on these pages more prominently and more often.

Ahhhhh, wrong. PPC set up right on a site can help improve SEO by increasing your target traffic, reducing your bounce rate(once again if your site is set up right) by increasing onsite time and page views.

It's not hard to set up your site where people will want to do 2-3 page views on your site. Something structured like this:

Home Page: Content with link to another page on your site which goes to a video embedded. The video link opens in a new tab or window which ever you choose makes no difference.

Video Page: Has a short 1 minute video based around something related to your site. Start of the video mention that the end of the video will provide a free download. At the end of the video you tell the user to scroll to the bottom of the page for the download link. The user needs to scroll down to the download link. When they click it, it goes to another page on your site. This can either open a new tab or in the same one, makes no difference at this stage.

Download page: Short opt in form the user needs to fill in to get the free download. If you wanted to be a little black hat, you could blur out the opt in form forcing the user to "like" your site before getting access to the form. I've never really tried this method, but have seen something similar which is completely white hat on SEORush which I thought was very cool, they delayed the results page with a pop up recommending people to like their page while they waited. Very cool idea and stays within FB terms and conditions.

Right there, three page views where your on site time has increased, your bounce rate has dropped and you have now got a new subscriber and maybe even a FB like.

So tell me once again, how does PPC have no long term benefits?

LOL..

Can't understand whats your idea about PPC. Let me give my words.

PPC(Pay-Per-Click) is an online advertising method where you have to pay some bidding money to get a position in paid results at your targeted keyword SERP. So users who came for the search results of your targeted keyword can click on these results to buy your services/products. If what you are providing is fine then you can get more sales. PPC, SEO, Affliate marketing, Emarketing, Forum marketing, whatever you are doing is just to take people before your services/products (your website). Then website qualities, popularity, reviews, and many more plays the role of running a sale.

YES, i agree that PPC or any other marketing campaign is to get sales which comes only when traffic comes to your site. In simple words, conversion of traffic to further step is called Sales.

Sorry i can't help you more than this. If still you are finding mistakes, Report error to WIKIPEDIA/wiki/Pay_per_click.

Thanks for replying me.. Anyway, you've started the topic of white hat seo techniques.. thread is Going very interesting..

Better idea.. I'll keep following..

Yeah.. you're right... PPC is more appropriate for E-Commerce while SEO is not much suitable for E-Commerce. Because, SEO has to be done using certain keywords only.. E-commerce sites have more products to sell so that PPC suits for E-commerce...

Good Idea. I ll keep in my mind.. What u r coming to say is, should not do PPC forever, when you get results from SEO, there is no need of PPC. Am I right?

No other methods will work for you to get targeted traffic. Either, you should spend your time for SEO or you've to pay for traffic...

Other methods,

SMO(Takes time), Affiliate marketing (CPA)

A really simple way which people never seem to make more use of is joining FB groups and pages related to your niche. Create a FB account for your business, then use the search function to look for related groups.

Lets say you built a review site on power drills. You create your FB page and then use the search function at the top to look for groups related to DIY, Woodworking, Handymen etc. But when you do your search don't pick one of the top 8 results, click the "See more results for "keyword" then use the tabs on the left to look for pages and groups.

Then begin to join in the discussions providing real posts and comments, nothing spammy. People will begin to look at your profile and then your site from there. You can also provide a free download with an opt in list either from FB or website.

As previously stated it does take time, but if you do this with Twitter and Google+, you'll begin to get alot more targeted traffic and it helps your rankings as well with occasional social signals dropped in here and there.

hmmmm. ok. Actually, most of fellow warriors told to do both in same time for better result. I think, both will be convenient for me. Anyway, I will try both at once. Thank you for reply...

Do ppc if you want to achieve immediate results. SEO may take for a while before you get the results but it's long term. I use both in my online campaigns.

SEO cant be great for AdSense. May be related to Adsense. Because, in PPC your site is getting placed depending Quality of the Site and it is based on the 3 factors upon the bidding amount.

1. Landing Page of the site
2. Relevancy
3. CTR

So, SEO has nothing to do in PPC.

Effective SEO is not free. Sure, you can do things manually, but it just eats up so much time.

Even if you are really picky and refined with your keyword research, you're still going to need to build back links even to rank the zero competition keywords to the top, and these are keywords that garner anywhere from 100-1000 search a month, a little more if you're lucky.

SEO and PPC should be used in conjunction honestly; in actuality, PPC may be a better educator in learning what the 'real' profitable keywords are (laser targeted keywords).

SEO means executing proper keyword research to find keywords that are profitable, yet have very low competition. PPC involves using laser targeted keywords right off the bat, and writing/creating ads that get high CTR rates. High ad CTR rates = Google makes more money = your cpc bids are lowered = everyone wins.

Hmm.. yes.. you're right..