When many business owners think about SEO and PPC, they think: black and white, north and south – things that are very different from one another. The reality is – SEO and PPC are far more similar than many business owners believe.

In case there’s any confusion, “SEO” stands for Search Engine Optimization. “PPC” stands for Pay Per Click advertising. SEO is the process of making changes to your website and your overall online presence in order to improve your website’s visibility in the organic, natural or “free” search results. PPC is a form of advertising where you select keyword phrases for which you’d like your business to display on a search engine results page. You select your keyword phrases, decide how much you’re willing to pay per click (your “bid”) and Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. will display your ads in the paid section of the search results page (typically the top 3 spots and along the right-hand side of the page).

Many business owners see SEO as the more attractive of the two options because there is no (perceived) cost per click. It is also widely known that consumers and searchers find the organic search results to be more “trustworthy” vs. the PPC ads. The challenge with SEO is that the search engines keep their ranking algorithms secret and there are few reliable sources that explain the SEO process to business owners. PPC, on the other hand, has a published rule book and is entirely under the control of the person managing the account (assuming they’ve read the rules and know the game!).

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So, how are SEO and PPC similar?

Let’s start by dismissing what top seo companies have said all along – organic clicks are not free. In all but non-competitive markets, you cannot expect your business to rank well organically for popular keywords outside of your brand name without a continued investment in SEO.

While you may not “pay PER click”, there is an effective cost per click with SEO – whatever you’re paying your SEO firm divided by the number of clicks you receive (over the course of some period of time – a period that is subject to much debate).

Another myth with SEO is that it’s a one-time event.

In the past, very few business owners knew about SEO, so it was possible to invest a little in SEO and then rank organically for a long, long time. Today, this is no longer the case. Ranking well for popular / competitive keywords requires an ongoing investment in SEO. So, SEO is now a lot more like PPC. If you “turn it off”, your rankings, traffic, leads and sales start to fade.

Finally, SEO is like PPC in that the costs are going up! What you pay per click is determined by the bids from other advertisers. More advertisers, more people bidding (more ignorant people bidding as well… bidding based on ego instead of economics) and prices are bound to go up. The same is true with SEO.

There’s a finite amount of real estate on the first page of Google. Very few people – like less than 15% – continue to page 2, so maximizing your first page real estate is critical. More people investing in SEO, means you have to do more SEO today than you did 2 years ago to get the same results. It’s depressing, but true. This is why you should be “all in” now. Get what you can while the gettin’ is good!

The best way to get more leads and sales from the web is to stop thinking PPC or SEO and instead think about the most you can afford to pay to get a new qualified visitor to your website. Hire a good website tracking and conversion rate optimization company to determine that number and then test marketing strategies to find the ones that generate the best visitors at the lowest cost per visit.

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