PPC or SEO?  Making the Right Decisions for Your Business.

With PPC and SEO You Need to Know the Basics.

Business Owners Must Understand Fundamentals of PPC and SEO.

I recently did an informal survey within the WealthNet Partners community of entrepreneurs, professionals and business owners.  I am always curious to know what content, education and information the community is seeking.

I got some feedback that pretty much shocked me.  I heard several business owners tell me that they don’t want to know about online marketing.  They just want to focus on their business.  I get what they are telling me.  But I don’t agree with it and here’s why.

It is absolutely incumbent upon us as business owners to understand the fundamentals of sales and marketing.  This is even more true for online marketing.  Whether managing your sales and marketing efforts directly or leveraging the talents of a team, outsourced or not, how can you make informed decisions that impact a positive return on investment if you aren’t willing to learn the fundamentals?

Can you be effective at golf if you don’t understand something as fundamental as the address or grip?  Can you make solid investment decisions if you aren’t willing to learn the difference between a stock, bond and mutual fund?  Can you stay in a meaningful relationship if you don’t know how to get along with your spouse or significant other?  No, you probably can’t which is why you may be on your 7th marriage.  (Just kidding about that.)

So what the heck does this have to do with PPC or SEO?  Which one is better than the other?  And what the heck do these acronyms actually mean in case you don’t know but you hear these terms thrown around a lot?

The point is that when it comes to driving more traffic to your website you need to understand the fundamentals of how to do this. You have two basic choices. The first is SEO which as about getting better organic search results.  PPC paying for clicks.  If you are not willing to know about the fundamentals of online marketing tactics such as these then every one of your competitors will eat your lunch when it comes to generating traffic, leads, and new business through their websites.

You need to know that neither SEO or PPC is better than the other.  Both can be effective and many businesses deploy both tactics.

The bottom line with SEO is you are trying to get a better search engine result over time.  Yes, it takes time and requires knowing exactly what to do.  Not that you need to do it yourself although many small businesses must do so before they can afford to pay someone else to do this work.

PPC stands for Pay Per Click.  Pretty much means what it says.  You pay for clicks or traffic.  There’s a cost per click.  This is how Google makes it’s billions in revenue.  Google sells advertising.  You either run the Google Adwords account yourself or you pay someone who knows what they’re doing to run the ad groups and campaigns for you.  Wise choice if you don’t even know what PPC means.

SEO really means two things. First, it has to do with the content on your site.  The images and text that spiders crawl.  (Creepy, huh?)  Well this is how search engines work.  Spiders crawl websites seeking content to index.  The more content you have properly indexed the more people can find your site, in theory.

The second critical aspect of SEO has to do with links.  Backlinks are links on other websites, blogs and forums that point back to your site.  The search engines see these links.  The better the quality of the links and the higher the quantity, meaning in the thousands, the better the impact for traffic to your site in terms of organic search engine results.

If you take the cheap approach to building crappy links (I can get you to the top of Google in two weeks is a statement that should tell you to hang up the phone and ignore the person giving you this pitch) the search engines will likely penalize you and may even shut down your site.  Yes, this happens all the time.  This can be true for more reasons that I don’t have time to go into now.

So there it is.  You now know what these acronyms stand for and you should be clear on the main differences between SEO and PPC.  Getting organic search results via proper keyword analysis, on-page structure, content development and link building takes knowledge, time and money.  No way around it.  Buying clicks can funnel instant new traffic to your site.  If you site is designed well, ecommerce or not, this traffic should translate to more sales.  If not, why spend the money on the advertising?

If you give a darn about growing your business you better be willing to learn this stuff at least at a fundamental level.  If not, you’re prone to getting ripped off and wasting your hard-earned money.  If so, you can make more informed decisions.

What questions do you have about SEO and PPC?  Would it be helpful to talk about it?  What’s working for you and what’s not when it comes to SEO and PPC?

We always appreciate your comments and suggestions here on the WealthNet Partners blog.

I almost forgot to mention this.  The people on the WealthNet Partners team who run our PPC and SEO services are brilliant.  I am not bragging but I have to admit that I am very proud to be able to work with such talented professionals.  If you are interested in learning how really good they are we offer the following…

Free PPC Analysis.  Click here now to get yours.  Just complete the web form at the top of this page.

Free SEO Analysis.  Click here now to get yours.  Just complete the web form on at the top of this page.