SEO vs. CPC Keyword Advertising

Search engine optimization (SEO) and cost-per-click keyword advertising are two different approaches for achieving the same purpose: to drive targeted traffic or sales leads to a Web site. Each has its strengths and weaknesses, and it is our experience that search engine marketing is most effective when both tactics are used in a complementary fashion in achieving the marketing goal.

For example, one efficient approach is to optimize a site for the most important keyword phrases that are searched frequently, and to do CPC keyword advertising on those keyword phrases that are less frequently searched. This is economically sound because SEO entails much effort and attendant cost, and should therefore be used on the most popular keyword phrases that will provide a quicker return on investment. Keyword phrases that don’t get much volume of search are in many ways ideal for keyword advertising because they’re likely to be overlooked by your competition, and being less competitive, will likely carry lower CPC rates and better ROAD (return on ad spend).

That said, it seems everyone today is doing CPC keyword advertising, while few are engaged in SEO, at least on a professional level. That’s understandable. CPC advertising is easily understood, at least on a surface level. You create an ad for a keyword, bid it into a position where it will reach consumers, and pay for your clickthroughs. SEO, on the other hand, is regarded by many as a mysterious black art. It also carries some negative connotations because it is abused by spammers and search engines therefore dislike it on principle.

CPC keyword advertising compared to SEO is somewhat analogous to advertising and public relations. Advertising is a clear cut ad buy, whereas public relations seeks to influence indirectly, oftentimes through influencing the objective editorial of media. But here’s where the analogy breaks down: unlike public relations, which seems to defy measuring and tracking, SEO is highly measurable. And it does the same thing as CPC advertising, which is to drive targeted traffic to your site through Internet search.

A common error is to think that one marketing discipline can somehow substitute for another. For example, the idea that public relations can ever be a substitute for advertising due to budget constraints. For this reason it’s worthwhile to delineate the very distinct benefits of SEO and CPC keyword advertising. As we said, they can complement each other in a search engine marketing program. But it’s important to understand the differences.

If we are forced to take SEO and CPC advertising as mutually exclusive marketing vehicles, we’ll argue that, for the right business categories, and if executed effectively, an SEO program can provide more value.

Benefits of CPC Keyword Advertising

1. You control what the consumer sees. You can specify exactly how your ad will look, though within the character limitations of the ad networks you use, and within the limitations of the visible text shown by search engines. For example, the sponsor sites listed in a Yahoo! search are very sparse in visible text: not much to catch the eye.



2. You can guarantee position, as long as you’re willing to be the top bidder, no matter what the cost. And as long as you can meet the various burdensome requirements of relevancy the networks establish to spike their profits (see Issues and Challenges in our CPC Keyword Advertising discussion).



3. You can usually find some relevant keyword phrases that are inexpensive. These probably won’t get much volume, but what they do get is high value due to the price.



4. You can achieve quick results. Unlike SEO, where some search engines can take up to three months to index your site (though this can usually be expedited by paying for express submissions), CPC listings can be out of the box in three days or less. This is ideal when you want to test keywords or ad copy or have a time-sensitive event to promote.



5. Until October 2002, keyword advertising on Overture was just about the only way to get exposure in Yahoo! search results, unless you were fortunate enough to have the searched keywords in your Yahoo! listing. Because when Yahoo! was searched, it would first pull results from its own directory, and only if these results were sparse would Web Page results from Google be shown. However, Yahoo! is now mixing in results from Google with its own directory results.



6. Finally, for some sites, CPC advertising may be the only worthwhile option for tapping into Internet search. Some business categories are unable to benefit from SEO because of a dearth of good relevant keywords that people are actually searching on. In some cases, a Web site’s design makes it inaccessible to search engines, and if there’s no budget or willingness to remedy this, CPC advertising may be the only option.

1. SEO can deliver greater volume of traffic to a site because people are 10 times more likely to click on a search result than on an ad. Search results have the credibility of any media editorial relative to advertising: the third-party endorsement of an objective editor. Another point is that with CPC keyword advertising, you get only what you pay for, i.e., the specific keyword phrases you’ve contracted for. In an SEO program, we target specific keywords, but at the same time we also open up a site to search engines, resulting in numerous visits from a wide variety of different searches, or combination of words and keywords we could not have anticipated.



2. SEO is less competitive than CPC keyword advertising. Today everyone seems to be doing keyword advertising, driving up the ticket prices of CPCs. In contrast, in most business categories, there is little to no competition in professional-level SEO. Professional level is an important distinction to make because there are many uninformed, amateur attempts to optimize sites. This often products ineffective results, or involves tactics that search engines can detect in an automated way and lead to penalties or deductions. One of our clients (prior to becoming a client) had once been removed from Google’s index, we believe, for using invisible links and repeating copy in comment and alt tags.



3. Over a period of time, SEO can be less expensive than a CPC program. This becomes more apparent every day as CPC advertising becomes increasingly popular and expensive. SEO involves a much larger upfront cost, for sure, but over time this is paid down relative to your site traffic and customer conversions. To maintain or improve SEO rankings does require ongoing monthly tweaking or maintenance. But this can be fairly minimal. With CPC keyword advertising, you keep paying every month, and usually paying more every month as the CPCs get driven up by competition.



4. In a sense, we look at achieving good rankings in search engines through SEO as a kind of equity that’s been invested in, built, earned. The competition has been analyzed, pages have been rewritten, perhaps re-architected, and your inbound-link position (an important SE ranking factor) has been improved, built over time. A lot has gone into making your pages highly relevant to the search engines. Granted, you can get tossed off page one of search results for a given keyword phrase the next time the search engine changes its algorithm, but if this happens we can usually analyze why and make some minor adjustments—because you’re already close.