SEO vs PPC: Which Is Better for Long-Term Growth? | Pros and Cons of Search Engine Optimization and Pay Per Click
“SEO vs PPC: which one is better for my business?” This is one of the most common questions we get from potential clients. They want to know which type of digital marketing technique would help them get the most customers.
While they are not wrong to ask such questions, the choice often depends on a lot of factors. In fact, business owners need to understand that both Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay-Per-Click (PPC) are super important for their business. That said, it’s important to know the key differences between the two to help make the right investment decision.
What is SEO? It’s a long-term, organic digital marketing technique that focuses on improving a site’s ranking in search engines. It’s an inexpensive way to make your way to the top of search results. It focuses on your website's technical health, the quality of its content, and its authority in the digital space.
What is PPC? It is a paid digital marketing technique where businesses pay a fee each time a user clicks on one of their ads. PPC ads appear prominently at the top of the search engine results pages (SERPs). With PPC, you’re buying visibility based on your marketing budget.
The difference between SEO and PPC goes beyond paying or not paying for visibility. It revolves around the nature of the traffic your site receives. According to Search Engine Land, organic search drives more than 53% of all website traffic, while paid search accounts for about 27%.
So, which is better? Is it SEO or PPC? At Sapphire SEO Solutions, we believe that SEO delivers the best ROI, unlike other traditional marketing channels, including PPC. However, PPC offers immediate, data-rich results that you can use to build your SEO strategy.
While PPC involves paying for ads to get instant visibility, SEO offers sustainable long-term growth. In this comprehensive guide, we will go over many different aspects of this topic, including the following:
How SEO efforts can drive sustainable growth
The importance of PPC for businesses
How can you decide which is better for your business?
Key Takeaways - SEO or PPC?
SEO builds sustainable, cost-effective growth, while PPC delivers instant visibility.
The best approach isn’t SEO or PPC—it’s using both together to maximize short-term wins and long-term ROI.
Sapphire SEO Solutions has proven expertise, driving results like 158% organic traffic growth and 2,000%+ impression increases for clients.
Start with PPC for immediate leads, then reinvest profits into SEO to build a long-term traffic engine.
Why Should You Use SEO? - Pros and Cons of Search Engine Optimization
Are your competitors dominating the search engine results? Chances are that they have a strong SEO strategy in place. SEO focuses on building a solid digital presence, and SEO can help improve your site’s authority and credibility.
Most business owners think strong SEO is about keyword stuffing or tricking search engine algorithms. They’re taking the wrong approach. Good SEO can help build a better website for your users.
Is SEO a Better Marketing Strategy?
Ever heard of the concept E-E-A-T? It’s how search engines judge the quality of your website. Search engines like Google want to reward sites that demonstrate expertise and trustworthiness. If you want to rank higher, you need to understand the different elements of SEO, which include the following:
SEO takes on a “pull” marketing approach that attracts an audience looking for a solution, product, or information. You’re basically targeting people who are ready to convert. This means higher-quality, more qualified organic traffic.
When someone is searching for "best commercial insurance," they are much more likely to be a qualified lead than someone who sees a random ad on social media.
SEO efforts contribute to a cumulative effect. Every little thing you do on your site, whether it is optimizing headers or earning backlinks, you’re strengthening your digital presence.
Why Should You Invest in SEO?
At Sapphire SEO Solutions, we’ve seen how an investment in SEO can deliver measurable results over time. From 2,000%+ improvement in impressions to 158% growth in organic traffic, SEO has helped our clients build a strong digital footprint. Check out our case study on how our SEO strategist helped achieve that growth in a single month!
For business owners, it’s important to understand the pros and cons of SEO. Here are some of the advantages of this digital marketing technique:
1. Sustainable, Cost-Effective Traffic
One of the key benefits of SEO is the no per-click costs. As soon as a page starts ranking high for a particular keyword, it can generate organic traffic for months or even years. You don’t need to pay every visitor, making this a cost-effective digital marketing technique.
When a business starts to dominate organic search results, it's less susceptible to the highly volatile nature of ad auctions and rising costs per click.
Don’t just take our word for it. A commercial insurance company invested $250,000 in SEO, resulting in over $823,000 in revenue. With the same marketing budget spent on PPC, you won’t even get close to that figure.
SEO ROI is incredibly high. You can check out our blog for more details on how to calculate, track, and measure SEO ROI.
2. Enhanced Brand Trust and Credibility
When you search for something on Google, do you click on the paid ads or scroll down?
SEO has an “Organic Halo” effect. Users are more likely to click on organic search results than paid ads. In fact, DemandSage reveals that 94% of users skip paid ads in favor of organic results.
SEO is all about creating helpful, valuable content that positions your company as an expert in the industry. This can build a loyal audience while enhancing trust and improving conversion rates.
SEO ensures greater reach. It involves creating high-quality content for every stage of the customer journey, from informational searches to high-intent queries.
Unlike a PPC campaign that stops delivering results once you stop the campaign, well-optimized evergreen content will continue to attract organic search traffic for years, ensuring a constant stream of leads.
That said, businesses need to focus on securing the top organic search results. This is because they have a click-through rate (CTR) of about 27.6%.
According to Backlinko, the first spot in search results has 10 times more CTR than the 10th organic position. The higher you rank, the more you stand out.
What Are the Challenges of SEO?
The road to ranking higher in search engines isn’t without its challenges. SEO has several limitations, some of which include the following:
SEO takes time: It can take months or even a year to see ranking improvements and traffic. For business owners looking for immediate revenue, SEO can be a difficult pill to swallow.
Constant changes in algorithms: Search engines like Google constantly update their algorithms. This means that what works today may not work tomorrow. You need to adapt frequently, something that business owners may not have the expertise or skills for.
SEO requires consistent investment: You can’t invest in SEO for a month and then stop pouring money into this digital marketing technique. SEO requires consistent investment before it starts paying off.
There is fierce competition: For highly competitive keywords, gaining a top ranking can be next to impossible. Business owners need to start their SEO journey immediately, whether it is creating SEO, following the SEO best practices, or executing daily SEO tasks.
When Should You Use PPC? - Pros and Cons of Pay-Per-Click
PPC is great for quick results. It is a paid advertising model that puts your business at the top of the search results page. PPC allows you to get instant visibility for targeted keywords.
Is PPC a Better Marketing Strategy?
PPC is a great digital marketing technique that provides instant results. You can set up and run a PPC campaign in just a matter of hours. A PPC ad provides granular control, allowing you to choose the audience and keywords to target.
With PPC, you can test different messaging, offers, and landing page variations. This helps you determine the best ad, campaign, or element that resonates with your audience, allowing you to refine it before committing to a full-blown organic marketing strategy.
What Are the Benefits of PPC?
PPC can be a powerful marketing technique with several benefits, including the following:
1. Instant, Measurable Results
With PPC, you pay when someone clicks on your ad. PPC is better when you need to get to the top of the page quickly. You can bid on keywords and target your audience with great precision. This ensures that the right people see your paid ads.
Setting up ads that appear at the top of the search results page is quick. That’s just how Google's layout is.
For those business owners not familiar with PPC, ads are paid online advertisements. They offer a wealth of real-time data, which includes impressions, clicks, cost per click, and conversions. This is a gold mine for businesses, as they can use this data to make quick decisions while optimizing their PPC campaigns.
2. Filling the SEO Gaps
Ranking organically, especially for highly competitive keywords, can take years. PPC offers an alternative way to compete for these valuable terms immediately. With such campaigns, you can start getting sales or leads for specific keywords from day one.
Since SEO can take time, PPC is a great and low-risk way to test the market if you’re introducing a new product or service. You’ll know whether your latest offering is a hit or a miss with your target audience before committing to a solid SEO strategy.
3. Brand Dominance and Retargeting
When combined with SEO, PPC campaigns can increase click-through rates and build authority. They help re-engage visitors and increase brand awareness by 80%. This improves your ROI.
What Are the Challenges of PPC?
While PPC offers immediate results, it comes with several challenges, which include the following:
The "Pay-to-Play" model: With PPC, you’re dependent on ad spend. When you stop paying for your PPC campaign, your traffic and visibility disappear completely. To maintain growth and visibility, PPC requires a continuous investment.
Rising costs and ad fatigue: With so many large businesses willing to pay huge sums of money for PPC, the cost of ad auctions has skyrocketed. This results in higher costs per click. Also, users can suffer from "ad fatigue," leading to lower click-through rates over time.
Low-intent traffic and click fraud: While PPC offers immediate traffic, some clicks may be from low-intent users. Plus, your competitors may repeatedly click on your ads, which is known as click fraud. This can drive up your marketing costs.
Competition from giants: Depending on your industry, you may be directly competing with businesses with huge advertising budgets. This can affect the ROI, especially if your spend on PPC is much lower. This is why PPC may not be the best solution for every small business owner. PPC involves paying for every visitor, and the costs can add up quickly.
PPC or SEO? Use SEO and PPC Together to Drive Organic Traffic and Get Instant Results!
Now that you know more about SEO and PPC, which one is the better option? If you ask us, it’s not about choosing one over the other. A successful digital marketing strategy involves a mix of multiple techniques and marketing tactics.
Use PPC and SEO Together for the Best Results
Smart businesses use SEO and PPC together. Here’s how:
1. Using PPC Data to Inform SEO Strategy
Keyword validation: A PPC campaign is great for keyword validation. You can test various keywords and see which ones drive the most conversions. After you’ve identified the winning search terms, use them to create a solid SEO strategy that drives measurable results.
A/B testing content: PPC is great for testing different headlines, meta descriptions, and on-page content variations on a landing page. You can use the results to optimize your site before investing in a full SEO campaign.
2. Using SEO to Power PPC Campaigns
Build authority for lower CPCs: A strong SEO presence and high website authority can lead to a higher Quality Score in Google Ads. This results in a lower cost-per-click and a better ad position.
Retargeting and funnel nurturing: You can use PPC to retarget visitors who found your site through organic search. For example, if someone reads a blog post on your site via SEO, you can later show them a targeted ad for your product or service. It’s a great way to guide potential customers further down the sales funnel.
3. Budget Allocation and Timelines
Short-term: For immediate lead generation and sales, you may want to use PPC. New businesses should allocate their short-term marketing budgets to PPC to generate quick cash flow.
Mid-term: As your business generates revenue from PPC, you should allocate a portion of those profits to a long-term SEO strategy. You’ll need to create high-quality content and build your site’s authority.
Long-term: As your organic rankings improve and traffic grows, you can gradually reduce your reliance on PPC for certain keywords. You can then shift that budget to new marketing campaigns or remarketing efforts.
At Sapphire SEO Solutions, we encourage business owners to invest in SEO. While PPC can get the gear turning, SEO is an asset-generating machine, driving real results for a long period of time.
How AI Overviews Affect Paid Ads and SEO
When you search for information on Google, you’ll often see an AI-powered summary appearing at the top of the SERPs. This is referred to as AI Overviews, and it’s changing the way we execute SEO and PPC strategies.
AI Overviews reduce the need to click through to a website for information. “Zero-click searches” are being normalized by Google and other search engines. This can reduce your click-through rates (some studies show up to a 60% decline in traffic) and push down your rankings.
To compete with AI Overviews, you need to have content that follows the E-E-A-T guidelines. Websites need to provide unique value, which may come from:
Original research
First-person experience
Complex, multi-faceted topics
Visual and video content
In addition to affecting SEO, AI Overviews has also impacted PPC campaigns, resulting in:
Reduced ad visibility and lower CTRs: AI Overviews takes prime real estate, pushing paid ads further down the page. This can reduce ad visibility and lower CTRs.
Increased cost-per-click: While ad visibility may decrease, PPC budget almost always stays the same. This can drive up CPC.
Shift from informational to commercial intent: AI Overviews not only provides instant answers to queries but also solutions. For example, “how to clean a pool” may result in step-by-step instructions with recommended products to purchase. This can create new opportunities for businesses to capitalize on.
Build a Solid SEO Strategy with Sapphire SEO Solutions Today!
After walking through the strengths and weaknesses of both SEO and PPC, you should now have a much clearer understanding of the difference between SEO and paid advertising. For small business owners, SEO is the best option to consider, as it doesn’t cost that much and can build a long-term lead-generating website.
However, for businesses with a decent marketing budget, both SEO and PPC are recommended. Using the right marketing tactics at the right time gives your business a competitive edge that can be difficult to replicate.
Sapphire SEO Solutions has been working with small businesses since 2007, helping them climb search rankings and drive more organic traffic.
Partner with us for affordable, long-term, sustainable growth by scheduling a free consultation and site audit. Fill out the online contact us form to reach out to an SEO expert today!
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