Digital Marketing is ever flourishing and companies are putting it at its forefront to capture potential customers. Thousands of such jobs are listed on widely sought vacancy portals like – Job Vacancy Result.
Pay Per Click (PPC) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) are the two most popular tools in digital marketing. Both are two sides of the same coin. Both are utilized to bring more traffic to your site. But but but! Both despite working towards achieving the same goal are different on many levels.
SEO is not as easy to employ as PPC, is time-consuming and not as straight-forward as PPC.
Search engines change their algorithm in regular intervals and that demands change in the SEO strategy as well. On the other hand, PPC is quick, direct and result-driven.
The Google search we do; the result depends on multitude of factors.
There are white-hat optimization techniques and then there are black-hat optimization techniques.
Anything between black and white hat is called Grey hat techniques. You need to be cautious of not crossing the line lest you want to go bust.
Here are the demerits of SEO,
1. SEO is not a fast procedure. It takes perpetual fine-tuning and fixing for the websites to rank up the charts.
2. Overnight, your website can be demoted by many places back in the search query rank and there is little you can do about it.
3. SEO technique is driven by content and its marketing and the bosses are reluctant to spend money on that. It makes things difficult. SEO technique is not as easy and straightforward as PPC techniques. Also, SEO is of two kinds,
1. On-page SEO
2. Off-page SEO
On-page SEO includes,
1.Meta Title: Google first reads this.
2.Meta Description: Meta description is no less important.
3. Heading Tag: The header tags make the content easier for the reader and the Google algorithm ranks articles with proper headers above.
4.Sitemap.xml: this is the collection of your website URL and pages.
5.Robots.txt: robots.txt is a locker employed when not to see pages.
6.Google Analytics Code: Google analytics used to analyse visitors.
Off-Page SEP includes:
1.Directory Submission
2.Social Bookmarking Submission
3.Profile Listing Submission
4.Business Listing Submission
5.Social Bookmarking submission
6.PDF File Submission
7.Blog Commenting
8.Guest Posting
9.Infographic submission
10.Article Submission
11.Blog Posting
12.Content sharing
On the other hand, PPC has following advantages over his slow cousin, SEO
1. PPC is capable of yielding quick processes & instant results.
2. PPC is based on ROI approach and the results are measurable.
3. You need not learn new google updates in its ranking algorithm or any kind of updates. Also no need to spend heavily on content and its marketing.
Now we know the merits and demerits of both and the question arises whether to solely apply PPC or solely PPC or a suitable mix of both.
If you are a business with little to no budget for online marketing and your online presence is nominal, then only opting for SEO can work for you.
If you are a business with a lot of its sales depend on online traffic then you should depend on PPC.
But there are marketers, clever marketers that take the best of both worlds, integrate them, and employ both for a better result. Better marketers stand a chance to land good jobs.
The advantages of using SEO and PPC simultaneously include:
Keyword and conversion data from PPC can be utilized in SEO (organic reach).
High-performing keywords could be utilized to increase traffic volume by targeting clicks in organic and paid techniques.
High-cost keywords, high-volume or low-converting keywords can be moved from PPC to organic search.
A/B testing of ad copy and landing pages can be utilized into organic listing and landing pages.
Marketing your content again allows you to stay in front of visitors after an initial touch through organic search and customized messaging around the engagement of visitors with your site.
PPC allows you to test your keyword strategy before committing to long-term SEO strategies.
Target users at throughout all stages of the customer journey right from research to comparison to evaluation to purchase with commercial keywords.
Gain awareness and confidence by having both strong organic and paid visibility.
There are plentiful of online tools that provide a list of keywords that the users use to Search for a particular topic.
For instance, below I’ve searched keywords for “Computer” and you can see a host of related search queries.
Even if you are an amateur, you can know how to position your website utilizing these words adeptly in the content on your website. Now after you incorporate these keywords,
you will see more relevant traffic being drawn to your website.
The next step is to understand your prospects better.
For that, you need to survey your target audience. Understand their pain points, their desires, spending-pattern, expectation, and the like. Guessing is not at all recommended. You need to be precise.
Beginning only with PPC is not likely to get you the desired results.
It will cost you money and time and the results would be below par.
You can’t merely market your product and ignore the needs of the end customer. Create a customer persona and design a survey based on that and gather more information.
PPC isn’t marketing to random people coming online and getting your product sold.
PPC done randomly is a senseless expense.
Now, you use the responses and target 5 pertinent and important questions to create a PPC campaign.
With this, your PPC campaign is a thousand times more likely to work because it is based on and addressed to the actual pain-points of the customers.
The three simple steps were,
1. Make relevant content and make it more visible using SEO techniques.
2. Survey the incoming audience.
3. Based on the gained information design a PPC campaign.
Today Digital Marketing, that included SEO, PPC and a gamut of other variables and tools is extremely important in a company’s success. Your online presence today is extremely important irrespective of whether you have to make sales online or not.
An online presence nowadays is equivalent to trustworthiness. Your company is doing business excellent offline? Good. But online presence and communication over the internet with present and potential customers makes you great.
Many websites and job portals list plethora of digital marketing jobs.
Companies today have realized the importance of how necessary it is to have an online presence to have a favourable opinion of you among the customers.
So if you wish to make a career in digital marketing, understanding the nuances of SEO and PPC is a good way to go. Then you could move ahead to content marketing, native
advertising, Email marketing, Affiliate marketing, Social Media Marketing, Marketing Automation, Video Marketing.
Gain tremendous expertise in each and you are a bound to have a successful digital marketing
career.
