SEO vs PPC: What’s the Difference?

Your site is up, and now it’s time to market it to new users. You’ve got a landing page, but what the heck is SEO vs PPC anyway? They are the keys to making your website a real success.

Keep reading to have it all explained – the wonderful world of Search Engine Optimization and Pay Per Click marketing!

What is SEO?

Search Engine Optimization is the art and science of preparing a website for the search engines like Google and Yahoo. Optimization means presenting your site so that you get the results you want out of the “SERPs”, or Search Engine Results Pages.

There isn’t one particular thing or technique that makes up SEO. It is a collection of activities and practices. There are as many approaches to SEO as there are marketers attempting to create web pages. You have to find the techniques that are appropriate for the particular site you’re promoting.

The concept of keywords is the most basic there is in the SEO field. Search engines group articles on the internet by keyword. If you have the word “dog” all over your post, the bots think, “perhaps the post is about dogs”.

Way back in the 90s, you could improve your SERP ranking just by stuffing keywords into a website. “DOG DOG DOG DOG” was really about dogs, way more than just 3 dogs.

That sort of thing worked 20 years ago before the search engines started using semantic artificial intelligence to actually understand the content. Today organic SEO is the best way to gain credibility on the internet.

Content is ranked by its actual impact. Quality backlinks and quality content are the top priorities of SEO operators today. There are no cheats, it’s all about the content.

SEO vs PPC

So what does PPC stand for? Pay per click, or PPC, is exactly what it sounds like. You pay – per click – that the advertising network generates for your site. They show impressions of an ad to users, and they charge you a fee for each user who clicks the ad.

PPC meaning is found on the platforms that serve the ads. Facebook, Google, and Yahoo offer the top three pay per click networks. They can isolate clicks based on user demographic profiles.

What is pay per click? It’s a method to zero in on exactly what your marketing strategy needs.

On all three top PPC networks, you can opt to only show your advertisement based on a certain geographic location. You could show your ad only to people in California, or a specific town in California. You could show your ad to specific people on a certain street, in a certain town, in California.

PPC vs SEO doesn’t have to be a competition. In both methods, you select keywords, which are then used to assign your impressions to people who the engine think might click it. Google compares the user’s previous search history, while Facebook compares what it thinks a user “likes”.

Get Your Marketing On!

Both Search Engine Optimization and Pay Per Click advertisement campaigns are important aspects of running a modern website. Master SEO vs PPC techniques and you have mastered the internet!

Keep reading our blog for more great tips for marketing your website.