Welcome to the final installation of my opinion on the ongoing debate of SEO vs. PPC.

In Part 1 and Part 2 of this 3 part series, I took a look at some of the individual benefits of SEO and PPC and how they compare to one another in terms of effectiveness. Today I’ll be taking a look at the outcome of this debate and drawing some conclusions from the benefits of each marketing method that we’ve identified in previous blog posts. Check it out…

So, who’s the winner?

Truth is there is no “winner” as such. SEO and PPC both have their individual benefits and are in essence two very different search marketing tools that can’t actually be compared to one another because they are just too dissimilar. The “winning” situation and strategy that all companies should really think about implementing is a balanced combination of the two strategies in order to take advantage of both of their individual strengths.

I constantly stumble across people debating the benefits of SEO versus the benefits of an effective PPC campaign. Many PPC agencies will slag off SEO agencies and vice-versa, but the truth is that each of these strategies are good in the their own right and should almost not even be compared to one another because they are effectively different things; the difference being that organic SEO traffic is technically free and PPC traffic is well, pay per click.

I have decided to do a 3 part blog focusing on the Benefits of SEO, the Benefits of PPC and the Benefit of using both in cahoots with one another in order to form a well balanced, all-round online marketing strategy.

Today’s post takes a look at the benefits of SEO when compared to PPC. Next week we will take a look at PPC and conclude the week after that. I hope you’ll find it as interesting to read as I have found it interesting to write.

Speakers

Kevin Ryan, Motive Marketing
Craig Danuloff, Click Equations Inc
Anders Hjorth, COO GroupM Search EMEA

This session went through the various aspects of PPC tools and when you should consider investing in tools.

Kevin Ryan, Motive Marketing

Tools like “Clickable” are mid market and pretty good.

From a survey I did –

• “What non-technical resources would your ideal search firm have?”
• “What are you missing now?”
• “What technical resources would you rate as most important?”
• “What is the primary driver in a search agency?”

The most common answer was – 3^rd party paid search tools. Agencies should build infographics to explain what they are doing.

Over the years bidding got really more complicated. The tools have become very good. Agencies have been squeezed to other services like landing page optimisation, Client intelligence, Primary research, technical oversight and informed decision making because the margins on a “percentage of spend” have become so low.

Dream teams are not uncommon. The US has a basketball dream team comprised of season favourites and Europe does much the same with soccer. Cricket and rugby pit World XI or World XV teams against various top performing nations. So, we’ve applied the principle to SEO and created a fantasy SEO agency of industry experts (or rock stars, if you prefer).

A task of this magnitude is fraught with danger. The inclusion of some stars automatically necessitates the exclusion of others and the risk of bruising egos and evoking the ire of fans is ever present. In addition, SEO experts can’t be pigeon-holed, very few specialise in only one aspect of SEO, cross-over skills are omnipresent and there is the risk that people will see preferred skills handed over to rivals and be placed in areas not of their choosing. But that is their fault for being so damn good.

In the past we’ve had moments where it has been easy for us to contact Google account managers to do the unlinking and linking for us, however we recently had to get this organised while our account manager had gone AWOL.

It’s been ages since I’ve worked on AdWords myself (hands on, besides the training I do), and I’ve spent the last few weeks getting back onto the bicycle and stuck in again. In most cases it is easier to work on a project from the beginning VS coming in at the end and having to figure out what the goal/strategy was for an account setup.

There are a number of reasons for starting a new fresh PPC/AdWords account for clients, such as: