You are trying to get your e-commerce business going and you are looking for the most effective online promotion strategy. So many options can be tried but which one produces the best results?
Search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) are very different strategies. Comparing the two will be a complex task. Which one will be more efficient? How should you promote your e-commerce website?
PPC Can Improve Your SEO Strategy
PPC and SEO can be used alongside each other. The two strategies achieve their specific goals. One can be used to aid the other and vice versa.
Search engine optimization is a long-term strategy while PPC produces instantaneous results. Each campaign has its specifics and the outcome will naturally be different.
PPC is usually an inexpensive marketing tool. It can be used as a test of your SEO efforts. Keyword analysis is needed to select the terms that are best for the marketing of your website. The very same terms can become crucial for your SEO strategy.
PPC gives you the perfect chance to try and correct any efforts before you start optimizing your e-commerce website for specific keywords.
SEO Provides More Long-Term Results
PPC is a marketing campaign that provides instant results. It can be used to promote a specific product or a campaign that your e-commerce website is launching.
SEO on the other hand produces results in the long-term. You will need more time to begin seeing results but once your website gets indexed and ranked, it will always be there for visitors to discover.
Depending on your goals, you should use either SEO or PPC or both. The two strategies can compliment each other. Over time, you will learn to differentiate and to know what strategy works better for the current situation.
Each web marketer learns through trial and error. PPC is the right tool to use because of its relative cheapness. At the same time, it can be analyzed, providing important hints about your future campaigns and the adjustments needed.
A Combined Strategy Always Works Better
Why should you choose either when you could be utilizing various promotional channels? Most web marketing experts will tell you to use a combined strategy for best results.
SEO and PPC work tremendously well together. PPC will drive traffic to your website but optimization will make visitors stay longer. The right content and the right keywords can capture the interest of visitors and turn them into a loyal audience.
It will be amateurish to rely on a single channel and to expect all-encompassing results. The type of campaign and the channel will determine the outcome, which is highly specific. It is also important to note that if people see both PPC ads and SEO results, the click through rate on your search engine links will usually increase.
The Best E-Commerce Marketing?
An e-commerce website demands the same marketing efforts as any other content-based website.
The fact that this website has smaller amounts of content makes SEO and social media marketing even more important. Each bit and each piece of information should be carefully thought, planned and created.
A lot of people struggle to decide between pursuing SEO or PPC, when in fact the two strategies complement each other. E-commerce marketing can benefit from SEO and PPC done simultaneously. The two strategies used alongside each other will result in both an instant traffic boost and popularity over the long term.
Author: Jamie Highland is a writer and marketer who has helped assisted with My Baby Shower Favors, a store that provides baby shower favors along with many other baby shower gifts.