The reality is that without some presence on Google, it’s possible your business won’t survive very long. To solve this problem, organizations often turn to two search strategies – search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC).

Over the course of our 15 years in business, we have had more and more clients ask us for advice on SEO and PPC strategies as marketing and communications became integrated. Now, we’re advising clients, almost daily, on SEO and PPC best practices. And the first conversation always centers around the difference between the two strategies.

So, that is what we’re exploring in this blog – SEO vs. PPC. Because there is so much to learn about these strategies, we’re even including some of our favorite resources and training.

To start, let’s define SEO and PPC.

• By definition, SEO is the practice of “increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results.” It’s important to note that search is the #1 driver of traffic to content sites and it even beats social media by more than 300%.
• Pay-per-click, on the other hand, is a model of internet marketing in which advertisers pay a fee each time one of their ads is clicked. In a way, you’re buying visits to your site rather than earning those visits organically. Paid ads can increase brand awareness by 80%.

The basics of an SEO strategy

Search engines have a single goal – to provide users with the most relevant answers or information. In order to do this, search engines, like Google, analyze:

1. How relevant content on a page is to the search query
2. How much ity the website has on the Internet

When you invest in SEO, you’re working through a strategy to improve ranking factors in order to increase the likelihood of your target audience finding you when they search for things related to your product or service.

In order to implement an SEO strategy, you need to build a Google presence. A few key ways to do this include:

• Building up the content on your site through blog posts, ebooks, whitepapers, Twitter Tweet