Driving traffic to your website can be a difficult task at times and two of the most effective ways to do this are organic search engine optimisation or SEO and Pay per click, however, which of these are the best? Well there is no definitive answer as both methods have advantages and disadvantages. Below I will detail the pros and cons of both.



Pay Per Click (PPC)



Advantages: The best feature that this method has is that you can instantly turn on targeted traffic to your website. Once you set up your keyphrase list your ads will only show when a search is done on your targeted keyphrases, which means if you have correctly selected your keyphrases you will only receive traffic that is specific to your website and products. Another advantage is that you only pay when someone clicks on your ad so you only have to pay when someone actually visits your website.



Disadvantages: The problem with PPC is that only 20% of searchers click on your ad which leaves 80% for the organic results. Also in the wrong hands this process can become very expensive. This is why I recommend you do your research, or better still hire a professional who knows how to get the best out of your PPC campaign. Another disadvantage is that when you stop your PPC account you will also instantly stop any traffic to your website.



Organic Search Engine Optimisation



Advantages: Search engine optimisation gets 80% of all traffic form a search query and if you are listed near the top of page one then this can be very lucrative to your business. There is no cost incurred for the amount of times someone clicks on your listings. Once your reach the top of the search engines it can mean that if you keep optimising your website then there is no reason why your website shouldn’t stay there. Pound for pound SEO is a far cheaper option. Many people think that search engine optimisation is expensive; however, if you weigh up the alternatives you will find it is very reasonably priced.



Disadvantages: The main disadvantage of SEO is it can take anything from 3-6 months to start seeing results and this can be frustrating for businesses that need to start to make sales straight away from their website. There is a lot more competition in the organic results than in PPC so receiving good results can be difficult. When receiving a website design quote make sure you ask about SEO services as this needs to considered for all new ecommerce projects.