Is SEO Still Relevant In A PPC World?

It would be fair to say that the Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) world has had one hell of a ride despite its relatively short lifespan.

The Early Days of SEO... 

In the early days there were quite a few unscrupulous SEO people using ‘black hat’ techniques to try and trick search engines into giving them a higher ranking than they deserved. There were also a few SEO agencies knocking about who would charge their clients and then not actually do any work. Their belief was that if its ‘under the hood’ it would be easier to pull the wool over someone’s eyes…

Then along came some pretty severe Google algorithm updates which attempted to penalise specific techniques and blow ‘black hat’ activities out of the water. Although it is fair to say that a lot of good websites also got caught up in the crossfire and this put the SEO industry into panic mode.

Since these early developments a lot has changed in the SEO world, so much so that if SEO isn’t a line on your company’s ‘To Do list’ it should be. SEO is very much a bonafide method to improve traffic to your website and can be used to generate some great results for your company. Don’t get me wrong though, just like any industry, there will always be the unscrupulous ones out there trying to stroke you at the first turn and likewise there will always be those who try and game the system. It doesn’t matter which industry you are in, they will always be there… Our advise is, if it's too good to be true, it probably is. Stick to doing things right just like in every other aspect of your business and you will be fine.

Is SEO worth the effort?...

So whilst SEO may be a good way to generate organic traffic for your website, with the growth of Pay Per Click (PPC) generating significant ‘paid traffic’ to company websites, we need to ask the question, is SEO still relevant? If you are using your website properly and using it to generate either leads or sales, perhaps SEO wont get you the results you need quickly enough? If you decided to use PPC instead you could drive specific types of visitors to your web pages. Should you just save yourself some time and money and forget about SEO altogether?

Even from a social media point of view, when Facebook changed things at their end it led to business pages finding that their posts were only being seen by a small percentage of their fanbase. Not great for business owners, but a very clever move by Facebook to drive more and more companies to advertise to their audience by creating Newsfeed Ads or even Boosting a specific Post on their page. For some businesses this has conditioned them to become masters of their own destiny by using PPC to bring their target audience to their website. So why should they still bother about poor old SEO?

As we have said previously, SEO takes a lot of skill, technical ability and perseverance. In other words it takes time. Time to do something and then time for the changes to take effect.

If you are a business owner and you have a specific campaign about to launch would you trust its success to SEO only? Probably not as you might just pay for a range of Facebook ads and/ or even Adwords instead in order to get your message/ content/ offer in front of the right audience.

So, if you can reach a large audience that resembles your target audience and you can drive traffic, engagement and ultimately conversions for a relatively small price, do you still need to bother with SEO?

Surely we can all forget about SEO now and just set aside a whole portion of our budget for PPC instead and simply buy the traffic we need?

Not so fast!!!

SEO Is Only One Part Of A Well Crafted Marketing Plan ...

If there is one thing we are passionate about at Enlighten IC it is that the “sum of the parts is greater than the whole”. We believe wholeheartedly that companies need to employ a mix of marketing techniques to market their businesses effectively. In other words, let’s not put all our eggs in one basket and drop SEO in favour of PPC!

A well crafted marketing strategy employing several different elements of the marketing mix will win hands down over a plan which just employs the one tactic. Broadening your scope is especially true in the online world. We have seen first hand with clients how a number of different initiatives working across SEO, PPC, Social Media, eNewsletters and Website Content can all work together to contribute to the overall traffic to a website.  Remove one element and the house of cards begins to fall. The performance of each item tends to lend support to the performance of each other element so that the sum of the parts begins to be greater than the whole.

Let’s look at things a different way, it is more than likely you are in business for the long haul. You’re not going to set you business up for just a year and then close it, are you? Well the good news is that SEO needs a long term mentality as well. The more you work to improve your website, add lots of content to it and give your audience what they want, the more your site will grow. Continue to optimise it for SEO and the higher it will begin to rise in the rankings. The more you work to make your site better the easier it will be to make those lucrative conversions.

Another point to consider is that paid advertising is actually disruptive marketing. You are essentially paying to disrupt your prospective customers from whatever it is they are doing  in order to put your advertisement in front of them. The flip side of this is that if someone happens upon your site via a search engine it is most probably due to the fact that your website piqued their interest and they actually want to go to your website to see what you have on offer.

If someone is searching on the likes of Google for a particular topic they either want to learn something, find out about something or else they could be in ‘active buyer mode’. For example, if they have Googled, “how does a radiator warm a room” they probably want to know how it all works, whereas if they Googled, “best portable office radiator” they could be ‘in the moment’ (or very close to it) to actually wanting to buy a portable radiator.

Google (and friends) want to look at your data and use it provide answers to whatever questions a searcher may have - no matter how they may have phrased the question. In other words imagine that Google wants to act like a human and serve you the information you need when you need it. Computers tend to deal with true and false statements, whereas Google is trying to build the ultimate algorithm which can give you the real answers to the questions you are actually searching for.

SEO Is Alive & Kicking And Is An Important Part of Your Marketing...

So in our eyes SEO is still very much alive and kicking. With an estimated 200 plus ranking factors, to do SEO properly it is actually a very complex and time consuming process. Well, if you’re going to do it right that is!

We think SEO will always be important, however, perhaps we need to move away from a formulaic approach to SEO and get back to basics by delivering our message through great content designed for our chosen audience and then optimise our site from this perspective. Let’s use SEO to drive us to give our audience what they want and we will be well on our way. At the end of the day, if Google wants to present us with the information we are looking for when we want it we should start to present our content in this way too and get ourselves ahead of the curve.

Of course we need to continue to optimise our site according to SEO Best Practices but let’s not try to be too clever - let’s not try to be too clever as any tricks are just for the short term and could also win you a penalty!

Perhaps we should actually start to think about ‘Customer Information Optimisation’ or ‘Customer Knowledge Optimisation’ instead? Maybe even just ‘Customer Optimisation’ would be enough to give us the shift in mindset we need when we think about how SEO can really help us to build substantial, high quality traffic for our website.

So whilst PPC can help to drive a very specific audience to your website when you want it, we believe that you should also balance this with a healthy SEO plan for your site. Understand your audience and what it is they are looking for. Write plenty of content for them on a regular basis and optimise it as per SEO Best Practices. Please don’t through the baby out with the bath water in the belief that PPC will solve all your traffic problems. Boost this with some real, active, ‘in the moment’, visitors who come to your website because they actually want to. Follow this this approach and it will serve your website well. 

Always remember that there isn’t actually a traffic problem out there as some agencies and website owners might tell you. What there really is is a lack of customer understanding and not giving customers the experience they want. Nail this and you will have all the traffic you want. 

It is therefore our strong belief that SEO is still very relevant in today’s PPC world.

If you would like to find out more about how Enlighten IC works with our clients to build integrated campaigns which encompass a wide range of activities, including SEO and PPC, please feel free to get in touch.