There are many ways to promote your website on the internet. There’s SEO, Pay Per Click (PPC), Social Media, and Viral Marketing.
Of these methods, SEO or search engine optimisation is by far one of the best, longest-lasting, and most cost-effective. Pay Per Click – when executed properly – can also bring in a lot of relevant traffic to your site. Both methods bring in visitors that are already interested in your website because they searched for it or saw your ad and clicked on it. Both methods have high conversion rates; you can likely turn these visitors into engaged customers.
You may be asking – What is best for me? SEO or PPC? The answer really depends on what your goals are. Determining exactly what you want to happen is the key to making the right choice.
If your website’s goal is to make quick sales and not really to build a brand, then PPC may be what you need. Let’s say your goal is to sell as many fireworks as possible for the 4th of July. PPC can being in a surge of interested customers during the small window of time during which you need to sell your products or services before they are no longer needed or wanted.
Now, let’s say that you own a bed and breakfast in Brighton and you want to use your website to sell rooms for the entire year – not just for the peak seasons. To really build a profitable business, you need longer lasting results, which can be accomplished with SEO. Some PPC campaigns on the side wouldn’t hurt, but you can benefit even more if you invest time and money on optimising for your target keywords.
PPC is a great marketing tool if you have a big budget and your goal is to sell quickly. Remember that in PPC, you pay whenever someone clicks your ad – and that could easily add up to thousands.
On the other hand, SEO – while it takes much longer to yield results – has longer-lasting effects. Once you get decent rankings in Google, Yahoo, and other major search engines, you can get more clicks without you ever having to pay a dime.
Marketing your website is extremely important, no matter what method you use. It’s not enough that you have the best products or the best-designed site. If it is not marketed, then no one will see it, and you cannot make money from it.
