SEO vs PPC – Which is Better for Your an eCommerce Site?
by Josh Biggs in Ecommerce on 16th February 2020The eCommerce industry continues to grow into a very lucrative niche. Thousands of brands have created their online shops to cater to the demand of their customers. Hence, it’s not surprising how competitive this industry has become. The influx of newly launched shops has made it harder for less popular brands to get the attention they need. Thankfully, there are a number of effective online marketing tactics used by various businesses today. Two examples of which are SEO and PPC.
SEO and PPC Defined – How They Work
In a nutshell, SEO and PPC are online marketing tactics used to drive traffic to certain pages on a website. The key difference between these two is how they help your site gain traction. With SEO, your web traffic comes from organic searches.
Pay-Per-Click or PPC, on one hand, makes use of paid traffic to increase your web page impression. If your ad wins in the auction, it will appear on the topmost portion of a search result page for your target terms. The strategic location of your web page boosts your clickthrough rate, which in effect can increase your chances of getting more customers.
Key Factors to Consider When Choosing Between SEO and PPC
While SEO and PPC work quite differently, they both provide great advantages to any business. That’s why digital marketing companies such as Pomelo Marketing offers both of these services to interested eCommerce clients. To help you figure out which one you should prioritize, you need to look at the following key factors:
Long-term investment
One of the first things a business considers when choosing between PPC and SEO is the costs involved. For PPC, you might need to spend around a hundred to a thousand dollars for your ads. And usually, your ads would only appear for a limited time. While it can give you a substantial number of potential leads, you need to spend roughly the same amount of money the next month to attract another batch of customers.
As for SEO, ranking your target keyword won’t require you to pay the search engine. Instead, you only need to optimize your pages for search. While you might need to avail SEO services, at least the optimized content on your website stays there for years.
Your SEO content will help you rank on SERPs so more customers can find you when they use your target search terms. Additionally, you can share your SEO content on your social media pages and email newsletters.
Improved visibility
A well-designed eCommerce site filled with awesome products won’t make money if no one knows of its existence. PPC and SEO come quite handy in improving a shop’s online visibility.
If you need to gain quick exposure for an upcoming sale, you may use PPC. All you need to do is to set up your ads campaign and budget and submit your ads for evaluation. Once it gets through the auction, your ads will get displayed for your selected timeframe.
If you’re more keen on building your presence and authority, then you should focus on your SEO efforts. Check the product page meta description, add alt-text to the product images and insert search engine optimized content. You can also write blog posts or build your backlink profile using guest posting opportunities.
Clickthrough rate and credibility
Digital marketing specialists believe that organic results often have a higher clickthrough rate compared to paid ones. This is because customers find organic results more trustworthy than ads. Hence, if increasing your website’s CTR and credibility matters most to your business then you should dedicate more time to improve its SEO.
More precise customer targeting
Laser-focused targeting is probably one of the key advantages of using PPC. Unlike SEO, it allows you to present your content to customers who are potentially ready to buy a product. You can customize an ad using your search keywords, language setting, time of day, the device used, and location. PPC can definitely help you retarget old customers and even those who previously visited your web pages.
Final Verdict
Needless to say, search engine optimization and pay-per-click can work wonders for your eCommerce business. You have the option to use both tactics to grow your site and boost your revenue. However, if you lack the budget and manpower, then you may need to focus on one tactic first. Right now, which one do you think can offer the most advantage to your eCommerce site?