SEO vs PPC

Playing around on the forum today I saw one of those post that you see every time some one brings up the letters PPC.It goes something like SEO is better.

I’ve seen these post over and over anytime the letters PPC come up but I have to wonder is it really better and has anyone tested it?

I believe that both SEO and PPC are important in building a marketing campaign.

But which is the most successful?

I’ve not done any testing myself but would like to take a look at some of the arguments put up by the SEO guys.

1. You don’t have to worry about click fraud with SEO.

This is only partly true. If you spend the time to find keywords no one else is bidding on then you don’t have to worry about click fraud.

Your also able to prevent your keywords from going across publishers sites, which a lot of the people that are bidding on higher keywords do and is the reason so many people that are building AdSesne sites targeting the higher paying keywords don’t see the higher paying clicks.

Done right click fraud should not even be a concern.

I’d recommend finding someone that deals with PPC campaigns and let them handle yours for you.

I wonder how many times people have spent months trying to rank for a certain keyword to find it was to difficult and go in a different direction?

Whats worst, a month worth of hard work lost or a 10 cent click that want convert?

2. Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for FREE?

Not sure how many people have spent the time trying to rank a site on the search engines but SEO is not free.

If you hire someone it can be very expensive and if you do it yourself it can be very time consuming.

3. No bid wars.

If your not going after competitive keywords then you don’t really have to worry about this in PPC either.

4. You’re helping to improve search engine relevancy.

This one is true and I rather like it, so I left it in. Of course your job is about making money online so how relevant the search engines are should not be a concern of yours.
5. People trust organic results more and they look there first!

People do tend to look more at organic results and they tend to look there first but the serious people move on to the PPC ads.

Meaning you cut out a lot of the people that are just looking around with no intentions of making a purchase.

Saving on bandwidth and money.

6. Organic results won’t dim or disappear when a budget runs low.

True but then PPC want dim or disappear on the next update.

Also keep in mind that done right you should be making money with each campaign allowing you to continue month after month with an increase in budget and not a decrease, making this idea a little untrue.

I’m sure Ive missed a couple in there but those are the ones mostly used.

Now lets look at why I think PPC is better.

1. Your able to build your pages for your customers and not for the search engines.
2. Your able to use flash or anything else you want to use.
3. Your able to test different pages to see how they convert traffic into customers.
4. The next update is not going to hurt you.
5. Your able to change keywords any time you want.
6. You have total control over what page your visitor will enter your site.
7. You pay for the visitor and not the ranking

Now don’t get me wrong, I believe that organic ranking is a very important part of any marketing campaign, I just don’t believe that it’s better than PPC.