What’s the Difference & Which B2B Strategy Is Right for Your Business?

If you’re considering breaking into the world of digital marketing to increase online visibility, chances are you’ve come across a suite of acronyms that include SEO and PPC. Search Engine Optimization and Pay Per Click each offer unique capabilities that should be considered before deciding which program (or both) is right for your business. We’ve broken down the benefits of SEO and PPC advertising to help to determine where your efforts should be spent. 

The Difference Between SEO & PPC

To put it plainly, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) involves improving your website visibility on Google, Bing, Social Media platforms and additional search engines.

PPC (Pay-Per-Click) is a form of digital advertising that allows you to pay to show your ads higher up on the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) when someone types in a keyword or phrase related to your website service or product offering.

Search Engine Optimization Strategies

SEO allows you to make optimization changes upfront or on an ongoing basis to help increase and maintain visibility in search engines. Search Engine Optimization is cost-effective and allows you to set a specific initial budget to improve your rankings in the future. In fact, SEO can be free of charge after the upfront work is done.

Since your site is listed in search engines' natural results, SEO serves as a sort of third party endorsement. Savvy searchers know that the site didn't buy their way in, so the ranking is viewed as "earned." If you are willing to wait a few months for consistent results, SEO can help get broad coverage on many search engines worldwide. You may even get traffic from search engines you've never heard of.

SEO Pros

SEO Cons

Increased Credibility: Many users skip ads and trust organic results when researching a product. Cost-Effective: A successful SEO strategy is highly cost-effective in delivering awareness and relevant traffic while protecting your brand. Versatile: We can make smaller optimizations or site overhauls for the best possible results over time. 80/20 Rule: Optimized CMS Platforms can often generate 80% of the possible SEO results with only 20% of the work.

We must make changes to your website. Normally this is easy to do, and the changes are usually transparent to visitors. However, if you have invested heavily in an unfriendly search-engine-site, you may not want to implement workarounds to make it more welcoming to search engines. Results (rankings, traffic) sometimes start slowly, though they do build over time. It may take 3-4 months to see consistent, measurable results. There's no guarantee for results. Because search engines are dynamic, we can't predict or guarantee top ranking in search engines for all of your keywords, nor can we predict how much traffic we'll get. We are limited as to the number of search terms we can target based on the size of your website.

 

Pay Per Click Strategies

Pay per click advertising allows you to get your ads online and running above organic search results and competitor ads. This ensures that more users see your ads and promotions. By capturing more qualified searches, PPC can help drive traffic and leads to your website within less than a week, with special promotions and seasonal campaigns possible. After ads have launched, it’s easy to immediately measure results and optimize your ad copy, schedule, placement and virtually every aspect of your account periodically.

PPC Advantages

PPC Disadvantages

Measurable: Analytics provide instant results and accumulate usable data to demonstrate the success of your paid advertising campaign. See which ads get the most clicks so you can measure your messaging success. Cost-Effective: Only pay when someone reaches your website to ensure your budget is used as effectively and efficiently as possible. Verifiable: Account for every dollar with paid search advertising, including where, when, and how it was spent. Easily adjust your marketing budget based on the success of specific campaigns. Traceable: Assess the profitability of your campaign by comparing leads and profits to dollars spent. Get data showing exact ROI, how many RFQs become leads or how many ad clicks turn into purchases. Dynamic: Machine learning and dynamic ad capabilities help you show to the millions of users searching for B2B products and services every day.

Clicks can be expensive for more competitive keywords. As more companies learn about PPC, more enter the fray and bids go up. You must keep paying for clicks every month. If your marketing budget is ever cut, your listings will disappear along with your search engine traffic. Some searchers ignore sponsored listings since they know they're ads and skip down to the natural search results. It requires time to monitor, test and adjust listings on a constant basis. While your ads are displayed on the most popular search engines, your visibility is limited to roughly 90% of online users.

 

The Final Verdict: SEO & PPC Integration

You don't need to choose between SEO and PPC if you don't want to. In fact, many of our clients do both to achieve the best visibility possible. Some potential options include:

• Run a PPC campaign first, while you wait for visibility in search engines generated by your SEO program.
• Test keywords with PPC first to see which people respond to most, before undertaking SEO.
• Go with SEO first. If you're not happy with your rankings for some keywords, supplement with a limited PPC campaign.

Why Choose Ecreative for SEO & PPC Services

Our team of Google Analytics Certified SEO and Paid Search/Adwords specialists take the time to understand your business and any unique challenges you face in order to deliver tailored solutions that support your sales efforts to drive quality traffic lead generation to your website. We've helped hundreds of industrial businesses reach their sales goals through a full suite of advanced digital marketing services. We have over 20 years of experience building CMS and ecommerce websites and implementing digital marketing strategies for OEMs, contract manufacturers, distributors, engineers, fastener websites, and more.

B2B Search Engine Optimization & Paid Strategies That Work!

Connect with our team to learn how SEO and paid search advertising can help you boost user engagement and website sales to reach your industrial business goals this year.

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