The question on most businesses lips is, what should I be investing my time and money into – SEO or Google ads?

The question seems rather straight forward, but the answer is much more detailed.

There is no real right answer.

It all depends on your business and your goals.

Various factors such as your niche, budget, time frames and competitors have an influence on what marketing strategy will work best for your business.

What is SEO?

SEO, search engine optimisation, is the process of optimising your website to gain traction from organic search engine results.

Googles intelligent algorithms index all web pages and looks for particular keywords, in order to match your website with relevant search queries.

SEO marketing assists your business to rank near the top on popular search engines, such as Google, and gain traction organically.

What is Google Ads or Adwords?

Google Adwords – now known as Google Ads – is the paid advertising software that Google uses to help businesses reach potential customers and clients.

Your business ads are usually displayed at the very top of Googles search results page.

The Google Ads strategy works by using the PPC method, meaning you only pay Google when your ad is clicked.

You can select relevant keywords specific to your business, so customers searching for your product or service can find you easily

The Benefits of SEO

I mean, what business wouldn’t prefer organic traffic over paid?

The higher you organically rank on Google, the more reliable customer will see you as.

Good quality visitors

SEO marketing pushes your website up the ranks for the relevant keywords, and the quality of content you provide. This means that you will receive traffic from users who are actively searching for information about your niche.

Organic gets more clicks than Google ads

You would presume that if you were the number one search engine result, you will get the most clicks. But in fact, recent studies show that over 70% of people searching online, will scroll past the Google ads and click on an organic link.

It can be done for free

Of course, businesses can pay for expert SEO marketing, but small businesses who are just starting out can benefit from SEO too. It requires a time investment rather than a huge financial one.

Disadvantages of SEO

It takes a long time to see results

If you are looking for a quick shortcut to bypass competitors and reach the top, then SEO is not for you. It can take a considerably long time to see results as you need to build up trust with Google, so it won’t generate a quick return on investment.

No guarantee of results

The main aim of SEO marketing is to achieve first page rankings on Google, but this isn’t always the case. With so much competition for keywords, landing that page one Google spot can be much harder than originally seemed.