Is Organic SEO Better Than Paid Advertising?
Did you know that 75% of searchers never click past the first page of results?
This means your business must rank at the top of Google search results. Failure to do so means losing valuable business. But what is the best way to shoot to the top of search engine results?
The two most popular options are SEO and paid advertising. So let's dive into these two techniques and explore why organic SEO outweighs paid ads.
What Is SEO?
Search engine optimization is improving the visibility of your website in organic search engine results. Google is by far the most popular search engine, with more than 92% of the market share.
The idea is to get your web pages to rank higher and, ideally, appear on the first page of search results. Additionally, your business's pages should take up as much space on search engine results pages (SERP) as possible.
To do this, you optimize your content to satisfy the search engine algorithms. First, the algorithms calculate the quality and relevance of your pages. Then, they use this information to rank your pages accordingly.
What Is Paid Advertising?
As the name suggests, paid advertising is when you pay to improve the visibility of your website on search engine results. Experts commonly refer to paid advertising as pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.
An advertiser pays a publisher for each click someone makes on an ad. This way, your business only pays when customers interact with the advertisement.
Paid ads use bidding and keyword targeting to deliver content to the top of search results.
Organic SEO vs Paid Advertising
The most important difference between organic SEO vs PPC is cost. Organic SEO focuses on unpaid rankings in search results, but PPC focuses on paid rankings.
This means the cost of paid advertising can quickly skyrocket. On the other hand, SEO has no direct costs, making it a more cost-effective strategy in the long run.
There are no guarantees on how long it will take your website to rank on Google's first page as many SEO factors come into play.
If your industry is very competitive, it may take well over 12 months. If you're facing less competition, it may be about 3 months.
Like compounding interest, SEO starts giving minimal results, but then it starts to build. If done well, over time you'll see the results snowballing.
Another big difference between SEO and paid advertising is their placement on the page. Paid ads appear at the top of search results. Thus, they will always be the first thing a searcher sees. However, it's easy to tell an ad from organic content because ads have a little "Ad" symbol next to them.
Following paid ads, organic search results take up ten spots on the page before users need to click the next page. At times, users may also see paid ads at the bottom of the page after the organic results.
Pros and Cons of Paid Advertising
While paid advertising can get you quick results, much faster than SEO, you'll likely spend a lot more money to get those results.
If your business is looking to push out a new product or engage in audience targeting, PPC is useful. PPC is one of the most comprehensive ways to target your ideal customers.
In addition, you can quickly run an A/B test to see which ads perform better, thus increasing engagement with your content. You just have to be prepared to pay for that engagement.
However, it's important to remember that PPC ads become stale after a while. So if you run ads for an extended period, you'll need to change them to keep engagement high.
Benefits of Organic SEO
For several reasons, many experts argue that organic SEO is better than paid advertising. Let's explore them more in-depth.
Cost
As mentioned, organic SEO is much less expensive than paid advertising. If your company doesn't have ad dollars to spend, you can create an SEO content strategy for free and implement it with the tools you already have.
While creating high-quality content takes a considerable amount of time, posting and sharing it costs nothing.
Plus, the conversion rate and ROI for almost all industries are much higher for SEO than PPC, making SEO a better long-term strategy.
If you have money to spend, you can hire an SEO expert to help create content that drives traffic to your website. You'll be able to spend your time more wisely with an SEO professional on your team.
Scalability
For businesses that want to scale quickly, SEO is the best choice. This is because organic optimizations compound over time. While PPC ads get old, SEO will continue to sustain growing returns over the long term. This means generating more:
Leads
Rankings
Revenue
Traffic
By creating evergreen content (content that will not become outdated), you ensure your content is positioned to help you scale.
Credibility
The long-term success of a business relies on its credibility in the market. Trust leads to repeat customers, while authority and expertise attract new customers.
One of the main goals of SEO is to build trust and credibility. Search engine algorithms emphasize EAT content. This is content that conveys:
Expertise
Authoritativeness
Trustworthiness
As your business increases search rankings, searchers will see it as a trustworthy and reliable source.
Of course, anyone can pay to be at the top of a search, but only those with the most credibility can organically appear at the top.
Variety
Another benefit of SEO is that you can create different types of content that resonate with various audience members.
Not everyone is at the same stage of the sales funnel. Some have only just found your brand, while others are ready to buy. With SEO, you can meet your audience where they are in the sales funnel, making it more likely they will continue to purchase.
Additionally, SEO supports other marketing channels. This includes:
Email
Paid
Social
Video
You can create a ripple effect for your SEO strategy by aligning your marketing channels. 3rd Party Cookies
In recent years, consumers created an uproar about big companies sharing (and selling) their data. This has prompted significant changes to data sharing. For example, Apple's Safari browser stopped sending cookies to third parties, and Google plans to phase out third-party cookies in Chrome by 2023.
Why does this matter?
It means that paid ads are at risk of losing their target power. You may have been able to justify the high cost of paid ads before to get instant results, but this may not be the case anymore.
SEO will remain a reliable source of organic traffic. Optimizing your website now means your brand presence won't be as heavily impacted when Google's cookie changes occur.
Organic content will continue to drive traffic long after you have created and invested in it. That's because search engines will keep ranking content that people find helpful.
It all goes back to the idea of strategic quality over paid quantity.
Get Started With SEO
Now that you understand SEO and paid advertising, you can see why many working in digital marketing say organic SEO is a better strategy to pursue.
With lower costs and higher results, it's no wonder why businesses of all sizes are focusing more on their SEO content strategies and less on paid ads.
If you found this article helpful, check out the other posts on our blog for more informative content about business marketing.
Written by Maggie McTavish. Maggie McTavish is the founder and CEO of Mango Media, a web and SEO agency that helps businesses get found on Google. She is a leader in the digital marketing field and has been on the cutting edge of technology over the past decade when every business started to need an online presence.