SEO vs PPC

Search Engine Optimisation or Pay Per Click. Which campaign type is right for your business? What is the difference between the two?

The differences are not very subtle, though the application of either campaign type can be. Pay Per Click is the online equivilent of the TV ad or the radio campaign. Advertisements, usually in the form of banners, are placed on serving websites, for instance Google, Yahoo, related media sites and partner sites. The campaigning site then pays for every click through that is received. Like traditional advertising the campaigns success is determined by the creativeness and relevancy to placement of the visual advert. Good tracking of PPC campaigns can result in very accurate reporting of the ROI of the campaign, especially given that unlike the offline world the effectiveness of the advert is immediately quantifiable. If the ad is good, more people will click on it. PPC campaigns have also led to the widespread implementation of split testing, where two adverts are run in parallel to test comparative effectiveness. PPC campaigns can be quite costly but once set up, they require little effort to maintain. Instead, the effort involved in PPC is focussed on measuring direct results

Search Engine Optimisation is at the opposite end of the scale with regard to subtlety and cost input. SEO campaigns are often quite cheap, once the tools to maintain the campaign are in place.
SEO relies on making your website as close to the ideal website - in the eyes of Google and the other search engines. As these businesses are unlikely to fully reveal the algorithm by which they determine the quality of websites (and indeed the algorithm is updated regularly) it is the job of the SEO expert to apply best practices and standards and also to stay on top of the SEO strategy, continually observing the effects of changes and following paths revealed as effective, much like natural selection.
Results from SEO campaigns can take a while to reveal themselves but if done properly an SEO campaign can have great effect as your website is presented directly to the target audience (i.e. people who have searched for a website just like yours).

It is hard to say which campaign is better. PPC campaigns can be carried out in conjunction with offline advertising in such a way that the overall effort can bring other rewards than just straight sales, such as raising brand awareness and expectations and occasionally even advertising and design awards, exposure which adds to your site's recognition within the online community.

On the other hand a decent SEO strategy can directly lead to an increase in sales as the aim is to put the site in the top of the search engine results pages. This directly increases the click through rate to the site and increases the chances of your site being found by a limitless audience.