Search Engine Optimization(SEO) or Pay Per Click (PPC)?

A problem is common to all startups. The problem is often “what is the best marketing strategy to promote startup product?” Startup founders especially African startups founders often if Search Engine Optimization (SEO) instead of Pay Per Click (PPC) will give a better return on investment or will the vice versa strategy be better?

. Another question often asked is “Should we invest our time and resources on search engine optimization or pay per click?”

There is no simple yes or no answer to what sort of traffic generating activity should a startup use. Both PPC and SEO have their place. What should determine whether to use SEO or PPC is first, the type of product you are selling. Secondly, the marketplace you are selling to, and lastly the objectives of your marketing strategies. In summary, what determines if you should use SEO or PPC is the product, the marketplace and overall objectives, though both of them have their place.

Before we delve deeper into what suit your marketing objectives, let’s talk briefly about SEO and PPC.

Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization, for short SEO, is incorporating content on your startup website, in order to improve your website visibility to search engines and their users.

SEO helps your website appear more when searchers’ queries on search engines are related to the contents you have on your website.

Without quality content, no startup can have an effective SEO strategy.

The way it works is this,

• You post a quality content that solves on problem on your website, 
• The search engines get the signal about your content you posted on your website,
• A user searches for contents like yours that solves his problem
• You optimize your website and the web pages by working on your website speed, using the same words the users enters on search engines
• The search engines direct them to your content you posted on your website.

Advantages of SEO

The foundation of good SEO is to have quality content on your website. SEO has its own advantages and disadvantages.

Let’s us check out the advantages it has;

• The Website Traffic: The search engine works for you with good SEO. Search engines direct its users to your website when you have the contents its users are searching for. You can monetize the traffic by selling the search engines users a product or service when they land on your website. Traffic through SEO is free unlike traffic through PPC.

• Traffic is sustainable: The traffic gotten through SEO is sustainable overtime – this is because it is free.  The foundation of the traffic you get is from the contents on your website, and therefore, the traffic does not easily dry up as long as you have the content on your website unlike PPC that dries up when you stop paying for the ads.

• Helps your branding: African startup has an inherent problem when starting out – lack of proper branding. When your contents are good and are of world class quality in the area of your startup, search engines recognize you as an authority in the niche. This generally helps the branding of your startup.

• Boost your reputation: Generating traffic through SEO automatically boosts your reputation. Lack of trust is one obstacle african startups need to overcome. Ranking high in the search result page signifies your business is genuine and boosts your reputation in the startup niche.

• High Return on Investment(ROI): You will generate a higher number of clicks through organic listing than a paid listing. People love to be educated rather than be sold to. Organic list by nature, educate its intended users. Paid listing by nature, sells to its users. 

Disadvantages of SEO

When you need to get results as fast as possible, It is not advisable to have SEO as the major strategy. SEO takes time. Before the benefits of SEO do not appear in days. It usually takes months.

Pay Per Click Marketing

Search Engines like Google, Bing are often of the most visited websites in the world. I bet you know the most visited website in the world. It is Google as you may have guessed. As you are reading this, there are thousands of people presently searching for some information on Google. Fortunately, Google and other search engines allow businesses to advertise on the search result page.

Pay-per-click marketing is buying traffic from search engines instead of earning the traffic. The truth is, earn a considerable amount of traffic organically is tough and takes some time. Pay-per-click. Instead of spending considerable effort to appear on top of the search result page, for a fee, you can appear on the top of the Google result page. Every time someone clicks on your link, and visit your website, you pay some amount of money.

When African Startup should use SEO

We talked about the advantages and disadvantages of SEO earlier. The major advantage of SEO is that it is free. You do not pay search engines. However, It requires some amount of work to get to the first page of the search engine result page

When African Startup should use PPC

When you have the money and want people to hear about your product as soon as possible, It is no brainer, Pay-per-click is the right direction to go