This is a question that will have been asked by just about every online advertiser out there. On one side of the argument, search engine optimisation seems the more logical approach to gaining consistent amounts of high quality traffic. However, surely with the amount of people using PPC around the world (in their millions), that must suggest PPC is also a great way to gain contextual traffic too? Which one should you use?
 

SEO

Search engine optimisation is all about improving how your website and your webpages rank on Google organic search results. When done right, the results are great – you are, in essence, gaining more consistent traffic in the long term from web users that are genuinely interested. You eliminate click fraud. The whole health of your website improves. In the long term too, it can also prove to be a much cheaper solution to high quality traffic than PPC.
 
However, SEO is difficult to implement. There is a general ‘jist’ around what helps SEO and what doesn’t. There is no certain way to performing it right. It takes time, patience and knowledge of SEO to make it truly work. If you are unsure how to do SEO, look at the updates search engines such as Google are doing to their algorithms. See why they do these updates and how you can make sure you will rank as high as possible in future.
 
 

PPC

Then we have pay per click advertising – the most used form of online advertising out there. There are many reasons why millions of people around the world use PPC. It is a cost effective solution to ranking top of search engines. It produces contextual traffic that generally converts. It is simple to use, quick to create and cheap to run. It is a great form of advertising.
 
However, it does have its drawbacks too. For example, many web users have learnt to ignore the first set of results when using search engines because they are adverts (and instead look to the first set of organic results). There is click fraud too and a poorly made campaign will not do well at all: you need to know how to use PPC to make it worthwhile to you.
 
 

Conclusion

Both PPC and SEO are great ways to gain traffic online. You should choose which one to use based on your current scenario. You might be starting up a business and need traffic quick – if that is the case, PPC will be your best bet. However, if you have a long term strategy, you might choose to put all your effort into SEO. Saying this, some advertisers tend to use both PPC and SEO to gain best results. It really depends on what you want to gain and the budget you have allocated, if any, towards gaining traffic.