There, I said it. Im willing to put down my battle ax if youre willing to cease fire.
For as long as there have been search engines, there have been two views of the best way to own them. Paying vs. earning. Bidding vs. optimizing. PPC vs. SEO.
You dont play for both teams, and rarely is there crossover of leaving one discipline for the other. Theres as much tension between them as Florida Gator fans and Urban Meyer, which is downright frustrating given how well they could work together.
But I get it.
About this time in the year, people start thinking about budgets for the upcoming year, and wherever there are two competing marketing tactics, one will inevitably get shafted and the other will inevitably be bitter about it.
Still, you dont see this type of rivalry between affiliate and email or PR and social or maybe you do; I dont know. Either way, the tension is especially thick between SEO and PPC. Maybe its because of budgets. Maybe its because theyre so tightly aligned and often get grouped under the blanket "SEM." Maybe its because Google AdWords keep taking up more and more real estate in the SERPs.
Whatever it is, no matter what side of the fence youre on, we forget were all working toward one common goal: to make money. Regardless if traffic or conversion rate are your key metrics, your job as a marketer is to make your company money, and we can make a lot more of it if SEO and PPC start playing nicely.
Part of the problem may be because were comparing SEO to PPC on a 1-to-1 ratio: If SEO isnt working, just move everything to PPC and vice versa. But what happens when you do that is that youre misallocating the budget to two different parts of a customer engagement.
SEO is a top-of-the-funnel marketing tactic. People do often buy when they enter your site organically, but primarily its a research-driven action. Conversion rates are low. Theyre seeing whats out there. They might just be starting their research process. They probably come back a few times before determining theyre ready to move forward.
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SEO and PPC Need to Stop Being Enemies