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.

SEO is no longer just about getting to that number 1 spot in Google. Yes, ranking at number 1 is a great start, but these days thanks to the numerous changes to algos, social representation and the actual layout of Google’s first page, there is so much more to think about when analyzing your CTR from page 1.

In the past if you ranked at number 1, it was said that you would receive a CTR of 30% or more purely by outranking your competitors. Now however, we have so many other factors that come into play such as Google’s social search results, videos, shopping results and map listings that simply ranking at number 1 no longer guarantees the CTR that you might have been used to in the past.

Moderator:
Christine Churchill – Key Relevence

Speakers:
Patrick Altoft – Branded 3
Rob Millard – Distilled
Kelvin Newman – Site visibility
Pete Wailes – Strategy Internet marketing

This session was about the age old topic of link building and various panellist’s tips and experiences.

Patrick Altoft – Branded 3

In their experience page rank from social sites does NOT flow throughout the linked-to site and will not carry trust, etc to the rest of the site. The great thing about twitter is many people syndicate their tweets on their websites and sidebars so your link is not only on twitter but also on many other sites. This is great for getting multiple IP’s and TLD’s. In this way you can get loads more links and traffic than you could ever get from dig or delicious.

I’ve always been a fan of the Joomla CMS system, well, for as long as it’s been around anyway. However, having more recently become more involved with SEO I’ve come across many individuals, Search marketing specialists and developers who claim that Joomla isn’t very search engine friendly and that other CMS systems, WordPress in particular, are more effective. As usual when faced with this sort of conflict of opinion, I decided to do some research and have a look what others have to say. Here is what I found out…

The fact is, when a Joomla website is used correctly, it is just as effective SEO-wise as any other CMS or regular website. Yes, in its most simple state it is not very effective, but this can be overcome by simply installing the Joomla sh404sef which effectively deals with clean URL’s and URL re-writing. It is extremely important though that you correctly use the SEF module from day 1 as this Joomla module does not re-write existing links to a web page that has recently changed its URL.

Search marketing specialists will agree: having a company blog and updating it regularly can be a time consuming task, but after you’ve read the benefits discussed in this article, you will realize that it’s all totally worth it. The two main areas in which a blog can help promote your company include SEO rankings as well as your relationship with your customers. Let’s take a look at these below, one at a time:

Company Reputation:

Company blogs are dynamic and can be regularly updated (unlike your website), thus you can effectively keep clients informed of the day to day happenings of your company. It is also an effective way to communicate your company’s true personality to your customers as blogs tend to be more opinion based than information based. Through this, readers feel like they are getting a peep into the real personalities of the people behind the scenes of the business.

I recently referred a colleague to an article written about duplicate content and why it is not good practice to regurgitate old content onto your website. My colleague read the article but struggled to make sense of it all as the article was just too technical for someone who is just getting started in SEO. So I had to go through the article with him and break it down into a more a more understandable format. This blog entry is a dummy version of what we discussed.

What is Duplicate Content?

This question has been on my mind for a while as I try to see the bigger picture of micro blogging for SEO marketing purposes. When you consider the fact that it sounds like glorified stalking; as Louis said about in his post about the dark side of Twitter, if your eight year old told you she was being followed, you’d probably freak out. And what can you really say in one sentence?

A lot, in fact: Oscar Wilde conveyed a great deal of meaning in short succinct sentences. I love Oscar Wilde’s wit and in one of his quotes he says that “Everything popular is wrong”. (Wilde would be such an entertaining tweeter). Twitter is certainly popular, but is it the right thing for SEO or is it just a waste of company time?

Jacqueline Zenn from SEOGroup thinks that most people are missing the point of Twitter in their attempts to use it for marketing purposes. She says, “Yes, there is nothing wrong with tweeting your latest post…but if that is all you use the service for you are completely missing the point”.