SEO vs Paid Advertising – Which Is Better?

In this competitive world, every business owner aims for high traffic and conversions, but the strategy does varies for each organization. Ideally, this dilemma exists between the two online marketing techniques – SEO and Paid Advertising. These two digital marketing strategies are the bottom-line detriment for the marketing and branding processes of the business houses. So, let’s try and understand how these techniques differ, what their distinct objectives are, and what suits the business goal.

Understanding SEO and Paid Advertising

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a consistent attempt to rank the web pages higher and optimize the content using the right algorithms. It is a long-term solution and requires less maintenance. Moreover, it is responsible for building trust and credibility in the long run. As a result, businesses can expect a sustainable ROI from SEO. However, what cannot be neglected is the fact that SEO takes longer to produce results and may not work optimally for time-sensitive content.
Alongside Paid Advertising/ Paid Search requires heavy investment to improve the brand visibility and is often termed PPC (Pay-per-click) Advertising. The targets are accomplished through keyword targeting and bidding which works extremely useful for time-sensitive content. As a result, PPC Advertising is meant to deliver quick and targeted results but requires high maintenance and budget to run it across the platforms.

Difference between SEO and Paid Advertising

The major difference between both these processes is based on four key aspects – Impression, Space, Cost, and KPIs. These points of distinction deals with the impact of both these practices on SERP (Search Engine Results Page).

Basis of Distinction	SEO	Paid Search
Impression on SERP	SEO targets the few out of many and hence the users have to scroll down the page to find their spot. It is less user-focused and takes longer to mark an impression on users.	The Paid Ads appear top of the search result and tend to dominate the user space. Hence, the visibility grows stronger with Paid Advertising.
Space Consumption	SEO is not confined to one target platform if ranked higher it opens ways to another platform. However, requires space consumption which makes it more flexible.	Paid Advertising targets specific platforms and hence becomes confined to the same. The content on the Paid Ads tends to be less flexible but provides rich snippets.
Cost Involvement	SEO is a long-lasting and pocket-friendly solution for improving visibility. It does not involve any direct cost and is highly cost-effective. However, it involves the indirect costs for content creation and maintenance.	Paid Search involves a huge direct cost where for each click the amount is paid. As a result, the cost escalates as the visibility and clicks grow. Alongside, just like SEO, it involves indirect costs too.
Key Performance Indicator	The conversion rate is the crucial KPI for analyzing the success rate of SEO practices. The healthier the conversion through organic search betters the performance of the SEO technique.	The effectiveness of Paid Advertisement can be studied using two KPIs Click through Rate(CTR) and Conversion Rate. They are expected to give a CTR of 5% with a 1.5x conversion rate.