SEO vs PPC
When promoting your Dental Practice’s website – there are 2 channels which you can use to do so, Search Engine Optimization and Pay Per Click. Both marketing strategies have their advantages, they can even compliment each other. Have a look at the following article which highlights the main benefits of each online marketing approach.
PPC – This form of advertising brings traffic to a website through visitors clicking on an advert, every time the advert is clicked a charge is made to the advertiser. The advertiser bids on certain keywords to bring only relevant traffic to their website. Through this process they can control the total level of their advertising budget.
SEO – A number of different factors relating to a website can be altered to make it appear higher in search engine rankings and therefore attract more visitors. The factors that can be changed include the site content, the actual coding of a site and the external links which point to it.
Both of these options can be used alongside each other and can be a cost-effective way to attract new visitors to your website, but they also have their own advantages and disadvantages, as outlined below:
Set-up time and costs
Pay-per-click advertising (PPC) can be set up to work effectively within a few days, whilst developing a site’s search engine optimisation may take months in many cases. Therefore using PPC can be useful for new websites, or for short term promotions as there is less initial cost involved and results will be achieved sooner.
Long term value
As it charges for every click to a site, PPC will remain a constant cost for a business over time. In contrast, a successful optimisation project can provide added value long after the initial work has been undertaken, allowing its cost-effectiveness to overtake that of PPC in the long term.
Risk
The value, or return on investment, that an SEO project can provide may vary dramatically. For example, a business with a well established website containing extensive content can stand to gain far more from SEO than a newly launched website with minimal content.
Assessing this value against the initial costs of optimising a site can be difficult. In contrast, the effectiveness of a PPC campaign can be assessed as money is invested, meaning that, if monitored closely, there is very little risk involved.
Measurability
Providers of PPC advertising, such as Google AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing provide information on clicks, with no need to set up any extra tracking, as leads or sales can also be tracked with the addition of a small piece of code, meaning that the cost per sale or lead can be tracked from the outset.
In contrast, to measure the effectiveness of a natural search engine optimisation project, a website analytics package or log files need to be reviewed, which can be a more complex process.
One or both?
In the majority of cases it can be worthwhile to include elements of both activities within a search engine marketing campaign. For example, once a website has established good natural search engine visibility PPC can still be used to:
- Fill gaps were the site is not naturally visible
- Target the most specific keywords, which are often very cost effective
- Provide flexibility for short term campaigns
- Test new keywords, with a view to optimising the site for these.
More posts from our team
Five Star
Reviewed Marketing
"Would definitely recommend to a friend"
"I cannot recommend Dental Design highly enough"
"Really great company to deal with"
"Very professional, efficient & adaptive to new situations"
"I cannot recommend them highly enough"
"Has been invaluable and gone out of her way to help us"
"We love the look of our practice website. Very professional!"
"Dental Design stood out both in their knowledge of the industry and their professionalism"
"The team and package offered at dental design was unrivalled"
"absolutely fantastic and are always on hand to help"
"Dental Design are fantastic to work with"
"always met with a swift and professional response"
