SEO vs Google AdWords

There is a distinct difference between SEO and AdWords, but both tools have the ability to increase the website users that later can lead to new clients.

There is a misleading idea that one might be better than the other and there are many debates on which marketing channel is better for driving traffic and value for a business. In some situations, it’s better to use just one tool and sometimes they should be used together and it’s all depending on your business and marketing goals.

Search Engine Optimization

SEO is the practice of optimising and modifying a website for the benefit of search engines. It involves a wide range of methods and tactics, from optimising the markup of your website to copywriting sections to promote target key phrases.

A common misconception with websites and search engines is that once a website goes live, it will be visible on search engines such as Google relatively quickly. This was perhaps the case several years ago, but since the dot com boom, the internet has exploded with the number of websites across the world. In fact, it’s difficult to pin down the number it grows by each day, but it’s thought to be around 50,000 every 24 hours. This means that to get noticed online, you’ll need a marketing strategy. Just like with any other medium, SEO is a vital component of a marketing campaign because 90% of people use search engines to find what they’re looking for online and 65% use the organic listings over the sponsored results.

AdWords logo

Google AdWords

Whether you’re looking to bring in new website visitors, grow online sales, get the phones ringing or keep customers coming back, Google AdWords can help.

Google Adwords is an advertising platform owned by Google. Advertisers can use this platform to add their ads in the Google Search Result Pages and Google Products.

As an advertiser, you can choose to pay when someone clicks on your ad (Cost Per Click or CPC) or when people see your ad (CPM or Cost per Thousands Impressions).

The whole Adwords system works like a big auction where advertisers compete for the available advertising places.

SEO vs Google AdWords

Now let’s compare them to see how they compete with each other.

  • Adwords is mainly for Google websites while SEO principles are applicable to all search engines.
  • Adwords ads appear on the top and bottom of Google Search Results and under certain conditions you can get one of those ad positions, but with SEO you have to work much harder to get one of the top positions in the organic search results.
  • Adwords is more immediate than SEO since you can create advertising campaigns almost instantly and start getting targeted traffic while with SEO you need a lot more time (especially for new websites) to get good rankings and traffic.
  • With Adwords is easier to calculate the ROI while with SEO is more difficult because there are a lot more factors that play a role and not just ad spending and revenue.
  • When you stop your AdWords campaigns traffic also stops but once you start getting organic traffic with SEO, this will continue long term.
  • With AdWords, you can target many keywords at the same time while with SEO you need to focus on a few keywords for best results.
  • With AdWords, you can advertise on other Google websites and websites that use Google Adsense but the results from SEO are only for the search results pages.

While is a good idea to start with Adwords because it’s faster, especially when you have an offer or sales, you should also begin working with SEO, Content marketing and social media for best results. These 3 tools are all you need for long term online success.

SEO and Adwords are not opponents but they are two powerful tools available in a good digital marketing arsenal.

Need to boost your websites visitors?

Contact Us
By |2018-03-26T16:17:05+01:00August, 2017|Uncategorised|