SEO - Again

SEO and PPC. The same, and totally different.

SEO and PPC are both intended to be a means to a similar goal: Driving traffic to your Web Site. So, in a sense they are similar. Since today brought my fifth call in a week about helping a small business owner get their site "SEO'd" (a new term, apparently) for PPC - I am guessing that it is nearly impossible for small business owners to understand the difference. That's cool. After all, that's why we're here.

First - Definitions:
PPC is an acronym for "Pay Per Click". You are paying Google (or Yahoo!, or MSN, or whomever) a certain amount of money every time someone clicks on your ad. An ad that you place on either a Search Result page, or in the Content Network. You could (though I don't see why you'd want to) purchase a PPC Campaign without even having a Web Site. It would be silly, but you could.

SEO is an acronym for "Search Engine Optimization". Essentially this means (there's really a lot more to it than this, but for brevity's sake we'll limit it to) formatting the code and content of your web site in such a way as to enable Search Engines to slurp up your pages, and make a decent guestimation on the relevancy and your content.

If the code of your web site is correctly built - Clean, Semantic, and keyword-dense, then your Organic Search Results should be good, meaning you show up near the top of the results for a specific keyword.

The other side, PPC, comes in handy when you are not getting the positioning that you feel you need for a particular term.

Think of it like this: If you're selling a car, you would clean it up, take the french fries out from under the seats and put a For Sale sign on it. If you have a reputation for having interesting cars for sale, you might get a number of people stopping by to see what you have - and it's possible that someone will buy it. To Optimize the selling experience (and this is the SEO part), you make sure that the tires are properly inflated, the air cleaner is changed, the oil and transmission fluid is changed - the inner workings (which are not readily visible to the casual observer) should all be taken care of. This way, when someone looks for your car, it's ready to be driven. You find all the documents, and can answer the questions anyone might ask.

Now, to bring PPC into the analogy - you could draw up some posters to put on bulletin boards at Safeway, or the mexican restaurant down the street. You could take an ad out in the Auto Trader. Just like these ads, PPC is not a guarantee that your ad will be seen - but it DOES place it in an area where it is more likely that someone who is interested in it would look.

You could place the ads whether or not the car is clean. You could clean up the car whether or not you're going to place ads. But, doing both in tandem greatly increases your chances of selling that car.

This leads us to another area - Search Engine Marketing (or SEM). SEM is more of a strategy than a process. It would involve telling your friends to tell their friends about your car. Going to the local bar and chatting-up people about what a fantastic ride it is. Writing articles discussing the wonders of this particular model, and hoping that someone reading your articles will mention that you're selling one just like it. SEM is more of a strategy, or a Program.

PPC is a Product, SEO is a Process, SEM is a Program.

I'll discuss SEM tactics more in another post, but for now remember this: SEO is not PPC. They are related, indeed - and both very, very useful, but both quite different.

Now, then: if you're ready for WebFeathers to help you get that car running smoothly so we can get some money in your pocket, why not give us a call.