Google is the largest search engine in existence, with more than 92% of market share. There are two main ways a business our brand can reach prospects on Google, and it’s important to understand what they are. Those two ways a business can reach prospects are Search Engine Optimization, commonly referred to as SEO and Pay Per Click Marketing, commonly referred to as PPC.

What is SEO

Search engine optimization, or SEO for short is a process that involves optimizing your site in order to increase its visibility when someone searches on Google. As the better you rank within search engines such as Bing and Google, the more likely it will gain attention from potential customers which could lead to an existing customer becoming loyal.

SEO stands for “search engine optimization” where it means improving your business website so they can be found by people searching online with popular sites like google. By doing this one simple thing, many companies have been able to grow their company's revenue because these websites are being seen by all sorts of different browsers everyday!

What is PPC

Pay-per-click, or PPC for short, is a model of internet marketing in which advertisers pay a fee every time one of their ads are clicked. Essentially it’s paying to get visits to your site instead attempting to “earn” those visits organically.

One popular form of this type advertising is Google Ads where you can bid on the keywords or keywords phrase that relates most closely with your products, services or business and have an ad show up at the top spot when someone searches using that term.

Which is Better?

If you were only able to use one then go PPC. PPC is a quicker and more immediate way to get your company's products or services in front of potential customers than SEO. You can launch a PPC campaign, start seeing results almost immediately, and not have to wait months before you know if it was worth the investment. SEO by comparison is a long-term investment that takes months to gain results in competitive markets. SEO takes much longer to produce results: for example it could take 6 months or 12 months before getting any leads from an investment in SEO service. You could hire an SEO firm for $1,000 or 2 grand per month depending how aggressive you want them to be but then still have no guarantee they'll get high rankings or clients with their efforts over 12 - 18 months time period. 

SEO is not as straightforward and easy to measure as people might be used to. As Google doesn’t share a lot of SEO data with website owners, it makes accurate measurement very difficult- if not impossible. This especially becomes an issue when there are many cases where branded traffic gets misconstrued for organic/natural searches which could lead you into thinking that your business has more leads from natural search engine results than what may actually be the case in reality.