There are a lot of ways for contracting company owners to market their businesses online. Two of the most popular methods are SEO and PPC ads.
But which one is best for contractors? Which one is best for your company right now?
In this blog post, we’ll discuss the pros and cons of SEO vs PPC ads, and more so you can decide which one is best for your business.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Defined
Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the practice of creating and improving a website’s content and structure to increase its visibility in search engine results. This can involve utilizing keywords, optimizing image alt tags, and enhancing loading speed. SEO differs from pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, where businesses pay for their website to appear as a sponsored result at the top of a search page.
PPC (Pay-Per-Click) Advertisement Defined
PPC, also known as pay-per-click advertising, is a popular form of online advertising. PPC ads appear in search engine results or on websites and are often labeled as “sponsored” or “ad.” Advertisers only pay when a user clicks on the ad, hence the name pay-per-click. PPC can be a valuable tool for businesses looking to increase website traffic and generate leads. Social media ads can also count as paid ads.
Both of these are among the 19 marketing tactics at your disposal.
SEO vs PPC
An SEO campaign focuses on creating more sustainable long-term growth in website traffic. It brings in organic traffic, which is the people looking for information related to your services or products. While it can take a year or longer to start seeing decent lead flow, once it starts, it’s the gift that keeps on giving.
PPC ads focus on more immediate leads, which can lead to getting jobs more quickly. But it’s not great for businesses that don’t have a brand or at least a recognizable one. More often than not, you’ll pay for clicks that don’t turn into leads as people keep looking at the organic search results.
When it comes to SEO vs PPC, you need to choose the one that works best for where your business is currently. Of course, a successful digital marketing strategy often utilizes both SEO and PPC tactics to give a website the strongest online presence possible.
SEO Pros And Cons
Search engine optimization is necessary for every business that wants to expand. Potential customers use search engines every day to find out information related to your services.
Pros
Generate More Leads
More traffic flowing to your site can lead to more leads. Once you have a lead, it’s up to you to turn that into a paying customer. But generating leads is a lot easier said than done unless you have SEO working for you. When it comes to SEO vs PPC, both can generate more leads.
Get An Edge On The Competition
If your competition isn’t using SEO, then you have a great opportunity to get ahead of them by optimizing your own site. Even if they are using SEO, that doesn’t mean you can’t still come out on top in the search engine results pages. By investing in SEO, you can help ensure that your site is the one that comes up first when potential customers are searching for businesses like yours online.
Increased Traffic
This one should be pretty obvious: once you get your website to rank higher on the Google search results page, you’re going to see more traffic. And as we just established, more traffic means more potential customers—and more customers mean more revenue. SEO often leads to higher levels of organic traffic. This is another commonality in the SEO vs PPC debate.
Improved User Experience
As we said before, SEO isn’t just about satisfying Google; it’s also about making improvements for your human visitors. After all, there’s no point in earning a high SERP ranking if your website doesn’t offer a good user experience. Fortunately, by taking steps to improve both your website’s SEO and UX, you can kill two birds with one stone.
Greater Insights into Your Customers
One of the best things about SEO is that it provides you with valuable insights into your target market. Through things like keyword research and web analytics, you can learn everything from who your target market is to what they’re looking for online. Armed with this information, you can make informed decisions about things like the products and services you offer, the content you create, and even the price points you set. You can also decide which side of the SEO vs PPC debate you fall on.
Increased Brand Awareness and Recognition
Another great thing about SEO is that it can help increase brand awareness and recognition for your business. This is because when people see your website appearing in SERPs time and time again, they’ll start to become familiar with your brand—even if they’ve never actually visited your website before. As we all know, brand recognition is essential for any business that wants to be successful in today’s digital world.
Improved ROI
Cost is huge when it comes to SEO vs PPC, and SEO offers a great return on investment (ROI). Once you pay to create a piece of content and put it on your website, you shouldn’t have to make any more payments for it. This makes it an incredibly cost-effective way to market your business online—which is why so many businesses are turning to SEO these days.
Cons
SEO Is Time-Consuming
One of the biggest downsides of SEO is that it can be very time-consuming. If you’re not using an automated tool like Moz or Ahrefs, conducting keyword research, competitor analysis, and link building can take hours—if not days—to complete. And that’s just for one page! If you’re trying to optimize an entire website, the task can become even more daunting.
It Requires Constant Monitoring
Another downside of SEO is that it requires constant monitoring. Google’s search engine algorithms are always changing, which means what worked last month might not work this month. As a result, you need to be constantly tweaking your website and content to ensure that you’re keeping up with the latest trends. Otherwise, your rankings and organic search traffic numbers could suffer. When it comes to SEO vs PPC, constant monitoring is needed for both.
You Could Get Penalized By Google
Perhaps the biggest risk of all when it comes to SEO is getting penalized by Google. Google is constantly changing its algorithm, and if you’re not careful, you could find yourself on the wrong side of a major update. If that happens, your website could plunge in the search rankings overnight, which be very difficult (if not impossible) to recover from.
Professional Expenses
It can be expensive to hire an experienced SEO specialist. A good SEO specialist can do wonders for your website, but they don’t come cheap. But the price for SEO is worth it once those leads start coming in.
This can be another commonality in the SEO vs PPC debate.
PPC Advertisements Pros And Cons
Paid search ads can be an amazing tool for generating leads quickly. PPC marketing is more complex than some business owners are led to believe. Let’s go over the pros and cons of using a paid ad.
Pros
PPC Can Be An Effective Way to Reach New Customers
One of the biggest benefits of PPC advertising is that it provides businesses with a way to reach new customers who are actively searching for their products or services. For example, if you own a contracting company that specializes in remodeling, you could use PPC ads to target people who are searching for “remodeling contractor” in your area. This is one more common area shared in the SEO vs PPC discussion.
PPC Is Targeted
One of the great things about PPC advertising is that it allows you to show your ads specifically to your target audience. For example, if you want to reach homeowners in a certain area, you can create an ad campaign that targets people in that geographic location. You can also target people based on their interests or other factors. This ensures that your ad dollars are being spent on ads that will reach people who are most likely to be interested in your services.
PPC Is Measurable
Another benefit of PPC advertising is that it is highly measurable. When you run a PPC campaign, you can track how many people see your ad, how many people click on your ad, and how many people convert into customers. This data can be extremely valuable as you fine-tune your paid search marketing strategy. For SEO vs PPC, you can get data for each and use it to change your marketing strategies.
PPC Is Flexible
PPC advertising is also flexible. You can adjust your budget, relevant keywords, and other factors at any time. This allows you to experiment with different strategies and find the approach that works best for your business.
PPC Can Be Cost-Effective
Another great benefit of PPC advertising is that it can be cost-effective. With most PPC campaigns, you only pay when someone clicks on your ads on search engine result pages. This means that you’re usually only paying for leads that have a high likelihood of converting into customers. Additionally, you can set a budget for your PPC campaign so that you don’t overspend. In the SEO vs PPC dispute, both can be either cost-effective or expensive, depending on which brings in more and better leads.
Appear At The Top Of Google
This can be great for building brand awareness, but there is no guarantee it’ll lead to new business. People still scroll down to the organic results.
Cons
There’s No Guarantee Of Success
Another downside of paid search advertising is that there’s no guarantee of success. Unlike other marketing channels like print or radio, with PPC ads, you’re not guaranteed any impressions or clicks simply by virtue of paying for the ad. In order to get people to actually see and click on your ad, you need to create a well-crafted campaign and continuously monitor and optimize it over time. This is another aspect shared in SEO vs PPC.
You Could Be Wasting Your Money
If you don’t have a solid plan in place for what you want your PPC ads to achieve, you could very well find yourself wasting your money. Without clear goals and metrics in place, it’s impossible to know whether or not your campaign is actually succeeding. Are the people who are clicking on your ad becoming customers? If not, why not? These are the types of questions you need to be able to answer in order to ensure that your PPC campaign is driving results.
It Takes Time To Set Up
Unlike other forms of advertising, where you can simply write an ad and start running it, setting up a PPC campaign takes time. You need to do keyword research, create targeted ad groups, write effective ads, and more. If you don’t have the time or resources to set up a campaign yourself, you may need to hire someone to do it for you. As far as the SEO vs PPC debate is concerned, this is one way in which they are comparable.
It Requires Ongoing Maintenance
Once your campaign is up and running, it’s not a set-it-and-forget-it type of deal. You need to continuously monitor your campaign and make adjustments as necessary. If you don’t have the time or resources to do this yourself, again, you may need to hire someone.
Additionally, as Google makes changes to its algorithm—which it does frequently—you’ll need to adjust your campaign accordingly to ensure that your ads are still being seen by potential customers.
You May Need A Large Budget
Depending on how competitive your industry is and the keywords you’re targeting, running a successful PPC campaign can be expensive. You’ll need to know about PPC budgets and bidding. If you don’t have the budget for it, PPC may not be the right marketing strategy for your business.
Are Higher Organic Search Results Or Google Ads Better For Your Contracting Business?
Now let’s get into the meat of SEO vs PPC for your contracting business.
SEO Is Better If You Need
- A system that will consistently bring in leads
- To build brand awareness and authority
- You have a lower marketing budget
- To target your audience at different stages of the sales funnel
PPC Ads Are Better If You Need
- Quicker results (and budget isn’t an issue)
- Promotion of a time-sensitive deal
- To get people to a sales page or landing page
- To test a new product or solution
SEO vs PPC OR SEO And PPC?
Should it always be one or the other, or can you do both at the same time? It’s recommended to do both as long as paid ads work. SEO will work given time, but PPC isn’t right for every business at every time.
Increased Visibility
When you use SEO and PPC ads together, you are increasing your visibility online. This is because your website will appear in both organic search results and paid search results. This means that more people will see your website and will have the opportunity to click through to it.
More Traffic
Using SEO and paid ads together instead of thinking about it as SEO vs PPC can lead to more traffic on your website. This is because people who see your website in the organic search results may be more likely to click on it if they also see it in the paid search results. Additionally, people who see your website in the paid search results may be more likely to click on it if they also see it in the organic results on search. Either way, using SEO and paid ads together can help you get more traffic to your website.
Greater ROI
Another benefit of using SEO and paid search advertisements together is that you can achieve a greater ROI or return on investment. This is because you are essentially getting two leads for the price of one when someone clicks on your website from both the organic results and the paid search results. Additionally, using SEO and paid search advertising together can help you save money on your overall marketing budget since you will not need to spend as much money on other forms of marketing, such as print or television advertising.
This is why the best strategy is SEO and PPC instead of SEO vs PPC.
Build Your Consistent Lead System Using Contractor Growth Network’s SEO Services
Are you looking to take your business to the next level? Contractor Growth Network can help! We are experts in SEO and lead generation, and we can help you build a consistent lead system that will bring in more customers month after month.
Book an appointment today so we can discuss your specific needs and how we can help you grow your contracting business.
