PPC vs SEO: Which should you start with and why?

PPC vs SEO: Which should you start with and why?

Everyone I talk to, who just started out with a new website, will usually ask if they should be running PPC campaigns or SEO campaigns and I always tell them the same thing.  You can't really judge one better than the other when you're just starting out, mainly because you don't understand how everything is going to work for your industry or niche right now.  If you knew how everything worked, before you started, there would never be any sort of testing because you'd get it right the first time lol.

PPC and SEO are both great methods to bring in traffic and sales, but one costs money to get instant results with no residual effects and the other doesn't bring in traffic right ways but builds over time.  So, you really have to ask yourself "Do I need to make money right now or can I afford to build something that will profit over a long period of time?".  If you can wait for profits to roll in, start with SEO and build your website up to scare your competitors off the top of the SERPs.  If you need profits right away and aren't worried about rankings, start with PPC to bring in traffic today.  Below I'll be going more into detail as to which you should be thinking about and what to do


What SEO does for your website
When you start a website, you might not understand the importance of adding keywords to your titles, descriptions, content, etc. in order to boost your rankings.  Well, it's time to start optimizing your pages and posts in order to rank for all of the keywords you can imagine!  Of course, you'll want to boost your rankings for keywords that will bring in the most traffic possible, but it's a better idea to start with long-tailed keywords and build up to the shorter ones. 

If you can do your SEO just right, and boost your rankings over time for specific keywords, you can get a massive amount of traffic to your website and make more money than your competitors.  Maybe in a few years, you can make $1,000s a day and sell your entire business for millions

What PPC does for your website
If you don't have the time, or patience, for SEO then you'll want to focus more on PPC campaigns to bring in instant traffic.  What PPC does is place your ad at the top of the search results on the search engines or social networks and that is how you get your traffic.  You will pay a certain amount set by you for every click you get, sometimes it will even be lower than your maximum bid, but you will still pay regardless of when and where you get the click from.

If you can tweak your PPC campaign to perfection, you will be able to funnel customers directly to your website without having to do much work, and you will profit more than you can imagine.  Now, in my experience, it takes a lot of time to get your ads just right and bring in countless customers, but you should be able to become profitable after just a few days of tweaking your settings and targeting.

You need sales, in the beginning, to keep your business alive
If you need to make money right away and you can't wait for your rankings to boost up to send traffic in through the search engines after successful SEO campaigns, you'll want to focus more on PPC.  This is because PPC is instant traffic whereas SEO brings people in over time. 

SEO takes time buts sends in a lot of super targeted traffic that you don't have to pay for later on. 
PPC is instant but you pay for each click you get and once you stop paying, the traffic stream dries up.

Focus on what's working and fix what isn't
If you have a PPC campaign up and running that is working well, focus on that and make it even better so you can make more money.  If your SEO campaign is doing great things, focus on that and build up your authority to a point where people are always coming to you for whatever they need.

Do both if you can afford to
It's not surprising that both SEO and PPC cost money, so if you can actually afford to do both then I would highly suggest you try it out.  Set up your PPC campaign and then switch over to SEO and do what you can to boost your rankings.  After a few days, you can go back to your PPC campaign and start editing for perfection, then shift back over to SEO and continue on. 

Time is money, and SEO does take a bit more than PPC, but the time invested into both at the same time should compile and build your website's profits more than if you were to do just one of these traffic methods successfully


In conclusion
You don't need SEO or PPC to run a website, but you will likely need them if you want traffic and some sales, so figure out which one is best for you in the beginning.  If you don't have much funding, go with SEO and invest your time to build your rankings.  If you have the funds, but not much time, invest more into PPC and tweak your campaign every few days to build your profits.  Now, if you can afford to do both and you have the time to invest, I would do that and compile your profits


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Thanks!

Tommy Carey