SEO vs PPC — Pros & Cons — Damon Burton // SEONational

Quotes

• “I think the first place to start is that Im not a PPC is bad, SEO is good guy. I think they both have their places as does any for marketing. I think where people get a lot of heated debate and sometimes intentionally throw rocks at each other and I think it is like a zero-sum game.” -Damon

• “The pros and cons of each of those is obviously paid ads and pay-to-play so the advantage of that is you get placement and exposure quicker. The disadvantage is youll always have a budget associated with those.” -Damon

• “The disadvantage of SEO is more like because its a long-term, slower play. But the advantage is you dont have a variable budget for the most part of something that fluctuates consistently on a day-to-day basis.” -Damon

• “I tend to decline and suggest PPC as those that they can experiment quicker with paid ads, dial-in where the potential return is, and just do a $2.00 in and $2.00 out.” -Damon

• “Its funny because I think of SEO being highest ROI marketing channel so it is a little counterintuitive. I understand that you may not have the time and the maturity but when you think about low margin businesses, my head goes to well you need to have a stomach to be able to take a loss for a little while but if you actually want to grow a low-margin businesyou need to be cultivating a marketing channel that doesnt cost a lot because you dont have a lot that you can afford to spend.” -Ben

• “PPC can be more effective than SEO sometimes in competitive bids, hitting that grey area of bidding on terms that are close to--I dont want to bid on trademark terms but terms that are closely aligned with a competitor. In SEO you are never going to outrank a competitor for their brand name but with paid ads you can slide in on brands that are close to branded terms. I think thats a potential area to consider PPC over SEO.” -Damon

• “SEO tends to have the biggest ROI and one of the parts that I find sexy aboutit is the wild card. With paid ads, its $2.00 in and $2.00 out, its very mathematical. With SEO over time you can get that data and dial it in more specifically but to me, its super sexy to have that wild card where you go from, for instance, a client did an $80,000 a year for SEO and now do they around $1.2 million dollars a month after SEO. There is no way that I could have guess-timated that number. So theres really a higher ceiling.” -Damon

• “Nowadays it seems like there is a movement coming back to SEO and Ive been here for 14 years but Ive seen other people further detached from SEO as the new shiny object come in such as Facebook ads and ClickFunnels and it seems like people are starting to realize the stability in SEO and now they are more willing to stomach that delay.” -Damon

• “One way to look at it if you want to try to get an immediately quantifiable perspective is you do paid ads, or lets throw a random number here. Lets say were paying $5,000 a month for paid ads and you get immediate traction and exposure. Its nice but paying $5,000 a month isnt so nice or you could do SEO which is still not cheap but cheaper, lets just say it is at $3,000 a month but this can take you up a year. So thats 36,000 bucks you have to come up which isnt anything exciting to throw on the line but 36,000 bucks vs 60,000 bucks and by the time it kicks in you own that product and it starts to have a return. So eventually when you hit the point of profitability, thats just free money, having bigger margins, and a growing audience.” -Damon

• “While with paid ads you cap out your audience, your ad spend can increase, your cost per acquisition can increase, and you have all these expenses that never stop. But with SEO once you start getting profitability it is very cyclical. You have to screw it up pretty hard to not continue the benefits of SEO.” -Damon

• “PPC is like eating sugar. It is a quick burst of energy and very gratifying. Doing SEO is like eating your brocolli. It is what helps you grow big and strong. The reality is, sometimes having a burst of sugar solves an acute need. As much as this is an SEO podcast and it has some distinct advantage in terms of ROI, there is a business case a time and a place for investing your marketing strategy in PPC as well.” -Ben