Hi, Eric McGehearty from Globe Runner here, and today I want to talk about the difference between SEO and PPC.

I think most of us know that search engine optimization is a process of getting a website to rank better in search results on Google, Bing, Yahoo, or whatever search engine you choose in the organic section.

Pay per click is a form of advertising, generally in search, that is the process of buying ads at the top of a search engine based on certain keywords.

They have a lot in common, because with both we’re targeting specific keywords and phrases to get a relevant customer or buyer to come into the website. If you have a number 1 result on SEO and a number 1 result on pay per click, you’ll achieve a similar outcome.

But with all that said, what should you expect from a campaign? The biggest difference is speed. SEO is something that is built over time and earned based on lots of factors including your popularity on the web. Other factors include how many people are linking to you, who is linking to you, your content, how great it is, your keyword usage, your site architecture, and your indexability.

When you are thinking about an SEO campaign and evaluating the performance, it should be looked at monthly, quarterly, annually. As much as you would evaluate any other KPI.

But it is a long term goal and not expected to see huge gains from month to month. With compounding interest in mind, you will see massive gains over extended periods of time.

Pay per click is a little different. It’s much quicker. you will see results very fast. in fact, you will see traffic the first day you turn it on. And that traffic hopefully will convert to leads and sales fairly quickly.

It usually takes a few weeks to a few months to really dial a pay per click campaign in and start generating really measurable, good results, but nonetheless, it’s a fast return on your investment.

Will it have a compounding interest effect? Generally no, not without doing extensive A/B testing and conversion rate optimization. Those will improve over time and ongoing enhancements to the campaign will improve but it won’t compound the same way SEO does. You will need to spend more money to get better results.

If your pay per click campaign is profitable, that’s exactly what you should do. If it’s not profitable, you should cut if off or make some significant changes to the way the account is structured before it continues.

Thanks so much, I look forward to talking to you next time.