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Pay Per Click - or Search Engine Optimisation - or both?

Pay Per Click (PPC) = The sponsored listings down the right side of the Google listings - complex campaigns are created which display your relevant ads for many different keywords. Each time a visitor clicks through, you pay for the click. How much you pay depends on what your competition is bidding, your maximum bid, and where you would like to position yourself (e.g. at the top? Or lower down?)

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) = The natural (sometimes called 'organic') listings on Google. They don't cost you anything when a visitor clicks, however it does cost time, effort and (if you want to do it right) money to get your website ranked well for your relevant keywords.

In a nutshell, pay per click (AdWords) advertising can deliver instant, relevant traffic. It offers a high level of control, but the cost is split up between the individual clicks (and the overall management fee). SEO takes advantages of natural listings traffic (which is free) - but is much more expensive in the short term in terms of the work involved. It's therefore more a long term approach, and doesn't offer immediacy or much control.

It's usually a case of choosing between Pay Per Click or SEO based on your business needs - however, it may (depending on your budget of course) make sense to use both. This would then offer the immediate benefits of AdWords, whilst developing a longer term strategy for natural traffic at the same time. The results from AdWords can also feed into SEO - for example noticing which keywords tend to be the most successful.

The table below compares the two approaches based on the relevant variables. If you have a particular question you'd like to ask, feel free to contact us.

	Pay Per Click	SEO
Budget	A tighter cashflow favours PPC, because the results are immediate and the whole idea is that it pays for itself. E.g. the management costs and clicks are covered by the profit of making sales. It costs between £ 250-£ 1000 pm for the management fee, depending on many variables. Click costs depend on your competitors 'keyword bids', but cost is at least spread out. Bid prices and wasted clicks can be reduced with professional management.	Costs between £1000-£ 4000 for 6 months of SEO work, and more a long term strategy to bring in plenty of natural traffic. Results won't take effect for months - but when they do, your investment is covered by the increased profits.
Immediacy	Immediate - you can get campaigns within minutes or a week (if you want it done properly). This means that even if your website is brand new, you can direct relevant, quality customers to it immediately, to sell your product or service, or test the site. Pay per click favours businesses where products or services may change, e.g. updated products, or changing seminars.	Long term - can take months or years to climb the rankings on search engines. Sometimes it can be sooner depending on the competition. Products or services should be more robust in their consistency to avoid ranking on a keyword that becomes obselete.
Website	Must be user-friendly, and optimised to lead to a conversion (sale, enquiry etc) to make use of the price of the click and make a profit. Could be a single page or a large site with many different landing pages.	Generally needs to be larger and more content focussed, so that relevant keywords can be optimised throughout. Must still also be commercial and user-friendly of course.
Your product or service	Can be excellent for specific items (e.g. brands, makes, models) as well as directing more generalised searches to your relevant site (e.g. "toasters" or "flower delivery banbury"). E.g. an electrical retailer client has thoussands of specific electrical products as keywords, all leading to their own relevant ads (so a high conversation rate).	Favours niches of keywords as well as highly specific ones, but they need to be consistent. The more of a niche your business is, the better your chances of achieving high rankings (niche is defined by keywords that have a demand, but little existing supply - or competition - on the internet).
Your involvement	Initial discussion to understand your products/services/needs, to allow for adequate keyword research and planning. May be a few more discussions to ensure you agree with the proposed strategy, and take your own ideas on board. Then you are given updates and regular reports.	As with Pay Per Click, although a little more involved in that we may need FTP access to your site to be able to optimise your content pages for keywords (depending on the service we have arranged with you).