Should you prioritize SEO or Paid Ads? Which is Better?

When you are marketing your website, it all comes down to strategy. What can you do to attract your target audience and bring traffic and leads to your website?

This is when you might want to consider your priorities and what marketing practices can best help you and your website.

That’s why today we will be discussing SEO and paid Google Ads! Both are useful tools that can amp up your marketing strategy, but which should you prioritize? We’ll dive into that throughout this article to help get you started. 

What is SEO?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. But what does this exactly mean? 

Let’s put this into perspective. Say you are searching for “Best beaches in the US” to plan your next beach day this summer. When you click search, Google gives you a list of the top-ranking websites for your query. The higher your website ranks on Google, the more visible you are to users. 

However, you can only achieve a high ranking on Google if your website is getting good traffic. This is where SEO comes in. 

SEO can be split into 2 categories: on-page SEO and off-page SEO

On-Page SEO

On-page SEO is what you control directly on your site, such as:

• Content creation
• Optimizing your website’s speed
• Leveraging structured data in your content
• Optimizing content for keywords that relate to your website AND your audience 
• Setting alt text on images

These are important practices that impact how well your website ranks. Something as simple as blogging consistently can boost your SEO strategy and in turn, your ranking.

Off-Page SEO

Off-page SEO is what happens off your site, but it can encourage desired actions by users. 

A desired action could be as simple as establishing backlinks. Backlinks are created when a website inserts a link on one of its pages to another website's page.

Why do they matter? Because each backlink counts as a voucher for your content. The more backlinks that go to your website, the more credibility you have. Through backlinks, your content reaches new users before they even click on your website. 

As we’ve shown, SEO is a handy tool to help you build your website’s reputation and ranking. By creating content that is 1) well-made and 2) well-written, you’ll improve your stats on Google in no time.

Let’s now move on to Google Ads.

What are Google Ads/What is PPC?

Formerly known as Google Adwords, Google Ads is an advertising platform that allows you to create multiple online ads on Google platforms. These ads are listed under “Sponsored” when you search for something on Google.

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When you use Google Ads, your ad is shown to users who search for certain keywords. For instance, let’s say your product is sunscreen, and a user searches for “best sunscreen”. 

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Google ads can help you reach your target audience by displaying your sunscreen product to the user, who may be inclined to click on your ad to learn more about your product. This allows you to target users who haven’t even seen your website yet. 

Google Ads is not free. Rather, it’s a PPC, or a pay-per-click service. This means that every time a user clicks on your ad, you are charged for every click. 

To use Google Ads, you have to set an advertising budget. This way, you can finance your ads and bid on Google Ad’s array of keywords. 

So, how do you choose between SEO or Google Ads? Let's dive into when you should prioritize one or the other. 

When to prioritize SEO

As we have discussed, both SEO and Google Ads can help your website’s ranking in search results. At Centori, we have worked with over 100 companies to achieve this very result. 

With our expertise and knowledge, we would recommend prioritizing SEO if you are looking to:

• Generate long-term growth 
• Have lower costs 
• Build consumer trust 

SEO is the way to go! Let’s go through how SEO can help you in each of these areas. 

Long-term growth 

There’s no doubt that SEO takes effort and time. It might be a few months before you see the actual benefits of SEO on your website.

But that’s why you have to think of SEO as an investment for your future. Google Ad campaigns can also be done for longer periods of time, but you can’t forget one thing: traffic is nothing without leads.

While both SEO and Google Ads can generate traffic for your website, SEO can generate more credible leads than Google Ads can. This is because of two factors:

1. Organic search results provide users with the most relevant information related to their keywords, increasing the chances of turning these users into leads.
2. Users are more likely to click on organic search results than ads. 

So even if SEO takes some time, creating the right content with SEO can help you maintain buildable, long-term traffic. 

Let’s now dive into keeping your costs low.

Lower costs 

While it depends on your industry and your competition, SEO generally costs less than Google Ads. 

Picture this: say that you have a software product that is priced at $50 per month. If you decide “Hey, I want to invest in SEO!” and you begin writing content targeted toward your product, you might spend about $500 -$2000. 

Now, if you write good content that ranks, this money will pay off itself as you will be getting consistent traffic to your website for free! This way, even if the initial investment into SEO might seem intimidating, it ends up being much cheaper than Google Ads in the long run.

The stats speak for themselves. Typically after 6 to 9 months, effective SEO strategies result in a lower cost per lead (40%-60% less) than a Google Ads campaign.

Now it’s time to discuss building consumer trust.

Consumer trust 

As mentioned before, ranking high on Google search results is a key factor in driving users to your website. But like any relationship, it all comes down to building trust with your potential buyer. 

Say, for example, that your product is sunglasses. And you have a potential customer searching for “best sunglasses” for their upcoming vacation.  

When the user clicks search, they will more likely first see a Google Ad listing different sunglasses. Let’s take a look at this ad below:

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The ad shows a nice pair of sunglasses with its picture, brand, price, and 4.5-star rating. 

But in reality, this ad isn’t really making a connection with the user at first glance. In most cases, the user is more likely to move onto an organic search that pops up after the ads, such as this: 

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When you click on this link, you are brought to an article that not only lists the factors above but goes into a deep dive into the brands and products listed. This type of research can go a long way toward earning the trust of a potential customer from a viewer into a buyer.  

By improving your ranking through organic efforts (such as articles), SEO can help you gain not only more customers but ultimately their trust in your brand.

When to prioritize Google Ads

While SEO is a handy tool, it might not be what you're looking for on your website right now. With Google Ads, it can be very easy for you to lose money by throwing around ineffective ads that don’t generate leads. 

But at Centori, we help you learn how to use Google Ads effectively for your website to avoid this. That’s why we only recommend using Google Ads if you are looking to:

• Get immediate results 
• Create targeted advertising campaigns
• Can spend consistently to get new customers

Google Ads might just be for you. Let’s go through how Google Ads can help you in these areas.

Get immediate results 

Sometimes, you might not have the time to wait for SEO results to kick in. That’s when Google Ads can help you most. 

Let’s say a viewer searches for “best beach coolers” and an ad for a brand the user is unfamiliar with pops up:

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Even if the user may not know this brand, this ad has helped Cotopaxi reach a new user before they even saw their website. And with this cooler’s five-star rating, the user might be more inclined to look into this product and become a lead. That’s an immediate result from just one user!

For newer websites, even before you have built up your site reputation and SEO ranking, Google Ads can help you gain visibility for relevant keywords and in turn, for your website. 

Let’s now get into creating targeted campaigns. 

Create targeted advertising campaigns

Google Ads is well known for its knack for precisely targeting users. Yet, it's even stronger for its ability to target specific search queries that line up with your product or service.

Let’s say a user is looking for “best insulated water bottles”

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The word here to note is “insulated”. The user doesn’t want just any water bottle, but one that can keep their drinks either hot or cold. And they want the best of what Google has to offer! 

With Google Ads, you can create targeted ads such as these to get down to the specifics of what your users want to turn them into leads. 

Now, let’s dive into some pricing logistics. 

Can spend consistently to get new customers

While money can’t buy you happiness, a business needs funding to survive and thrive. 

As we have mentioned, Google Ads is not free. That means that if you are seriously considering signing up for a Google Ad campaign, you need to set a budget.

Thankfully, Google Ads helps you keep track of how much you spend on your campaigns as you can see here:

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This way, you can see where you’re at in your spending to avoid overflow. Google Ads even has special offers for users depending on their spending. 

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As long as you are willing to drop a dime, Google Ads can help you get both traffic for your website and a return on your investment.

Let’s dive into whether Google Ads can help you improve your SEO.

Does Google Ads improve SEO?

When used properly, Google Ads can help improve your SEO performance. The two strategies even complement each other. 

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How so? Let’s go through an example. 

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First, It is important to remember that the amount you spend on Google Ads has no reflection on your SEO. Rather, Google Ads can provide you with significant insights into how you can improve your SEO. 

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Say you want to see what keywords drive the most traffic AND leads to your site. Separately, both Google Ads and SEO can help you learn what keywords are right for you. But when used together. Google Ads and SEO can simplify your search. 

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First, you can use Google Ads to test certain keywords for your content and see what works best. Google Ads can show you keywords your ad appears for depending on what audience you wish to target. This way, you can see what keywords are bringing users to your website, whether it’s paid Google content or new content you created to target these keywords. 

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When you identify these keywords, that’s when you can bring SEO into the mixture. Now that you know your keywords, you can create SEO efforts focused on those keywords for future campaigns and your website design. It’s as easy as can be!

How to decide between SEO and Google Ads

If you find yourself choosing between the red pill or the blue pill on this one, we can help! 

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We would recommend SEO for your business if:

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• You have an established business
• You have a smaller budget 
• You don’t need immediate results

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Yet, we recommend Google Ads if:

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• You have the budget to pay for ads
• You have a newer business 
• You want to drive up leads and sales 
• You need immediate results 

Start Think SEO is Right for You? Download Our Organic Growth Guide Today!

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