Good websites are created to do one simple thing, and that is to capture leads. More times than not websites do not have enough traffic to drive leads to it. Successful internet marketers have discovered the secret to driving traffic to a good lead capturing website. The secret lies in utilizing PPC and SEO to their fullest potential. Even though pay-per-click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO) marketing are strikingly different, they both offer similar results.
Advantages of PPC –
Users can now get instantaneous results using paid advertising, thanks to the top search engines on the internet. PPC is also known as pay-per-click because it is basically paid advertising. No other form of internet advertising offers faster results for online marketers. A PPC campaign can be up and running literally within a few minutes. This form of advertising allows the marketer to know exactly which keywords yield the best results based on the number of clicks that an ad receives. Once set up the ads are distributed all throughout the web ready to entice visitors to the destination website.
PPC marketing is just as much an art as it is a science. Successful online marketers spend a great deal of time learning the technical/science of proper keyword selection for their PPC campaigns. Tools such as freekeywords.wordtracker.com and adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal supply the information for lead generating keywords. Once this science of attracting potential leads has been established, the next step is to get these clicks to convert into actual leads. This is where the art of the message in the PPC ad begins to shine. In order for the PPC ad to lure potential customers, it must elicit some sort of desire in its compelling message. For example, Perry Marshall is noted for creating desire in his ads by saying the following. “Nobody who bought a drill actually wanted a drill. They wanted a hole. Therefore if one wants to sell drills, they should advertise information about making holes – NOT INFORMATION ABOUT DRILLS.”
Advantages of SEO –
Top search engines like Yahoo and Google are friendly to internet marketers that are patient enough to learn SEO. Search engine optimization is a little bit trickier than PPC but once mastered can product longer lasting results. As with PPC, SEO also generates traffic based on a single word, combination of words or word phrases. SEO rankings depend on two main criteria: (1) keywords and (2) competition for those keywords. Experience has shown that the first search term (i.e. meta tag) to get optimized is often times the first listing (non paid advertisement) on the search engine results page. It is also apparent that seniority plays a large role in the search result outcomes. At least that is how Google favors certain search terms.
PPC or SEO –
No one can say which is better; however, the lead generating results from PPC have proven to be faster than SEO. Another advantage to PPC is that it can help a website get optimized by providing back links to it (thus enhancing its SEO capability). On the other hand, SEO costs the online marketer nothing but time and “know how” to get high first page rankings. And SEO remains on the page for as long as the search engine will allow it to be there.
More Tactics –