Rand Fishkin started a war between PPC and SEO providers. At first glance his thesis seems correct. Maybe companies should be spending more money on SEO than on PPC. But Rand’s position is really based on incomplete data as shown by this response from SEMVironment.
We’ve said for a long time now that pay per click advertising and SEO compliment each and that’s the same conclusion drawn from SEMvironment, with the data to back it up:
I would say the doubling of net came because of the natural lift that each (PPC AND SEO) had on the other.
If your SEO isn’t targeting every keyword that you can target for your business, PPC can help you uncover new keywords. But even for the keywords that you are targeting, a PPC campaign can enhance the SEO you’ve got going on. Many searchers will click the organic listing of a company that also has a ad on the same page. You could easily be losing up to 10% of your potential traffic without that pay per click ad running alongside your organic search listing.
When it comes to choosing between SEO and PPC, you don’t have to put one above the other. You can do both and increase your ROI.
Thanks for the hat tip!