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Which One's The Right Strategy For You? From its advent as a communication and information dissemination channel, the Web has come a long, long way. Among other things, it has emerged as an evolved channel for marketers. With over 50.6 million Internet users in India, growing at 30 per cent each year, this is a channel that cannot be ignored. Currently, the options for reaching out to online users include Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Pay Per Click (PPC), banners on portals, and email marketing. Of these, SEO and PPC offer an excellent starting point for marketers venturing into online advertising. So how exactly does a marketer decide which of the two options to commence with? Before we tackle this question, let's take a closer look at what each option entails.

SEO SEO may be looked upon as a 'natural' or 'organic' process aimed at optimising the website for Internet search, and increasing the site's link popularity by acquiring or paying for links that point to the website. This ensures higher rankings on search engines for the search terms (keywords) chosen.

PPC In PPC Search Engine Advertising, the marketer purchases visitors (or clicks) from particular search engines. PPC campaigns enable marketers to attain top rankings on search engines by bidding (paying) for specific keywords related to their products and services.

Strengths and Weaknesses -- An Analysis Both the options discussed above have their individual strengths and weaknesses. For instance, with regard to SEO, there is a huge myth that it is a one time process and that it is inexpensive and easy. This is really not true. A marketer wanting to implement the SEO process on an in-house basis would need to have dedicated resources to monitor the website, continuously striving to make it more popular on the World Wide Web. The process is an ongoing one and requires specialised skill-sets and an in-depth understanding of both contemporary web technologies as well as the search engine's algorithms. It is also important to constantly add content to the website so that the Search Engines have a reason for coming back and indexing your page. Hence, when a marketer signs on for a Search Engine Optimisation Campaign, it is critically important to have a maintenance contract. In terms of ROI, natural search engine optimisation usually offers a much higher return on investment than PPC. The reasons underlying this are twofold: * Browsing Habits:Search engine users have a tendency to click more on the natural search results than on the Pay Per Click ads/links. Thus, the marketer gets more traffic by paying less. Better Networking through Link Popularity: One of the most important factors for improving rankings through natural SEO is to enhance the website's Link Popularity by paying for and acquiring links that point to the website. These links tend to ensure lasting results by offering top rankings on the search engines and also by driving traffic from the search engines; additionally, the links in themselves tend to provide a significant boost in traffic. However, the biggest weakness of natural search engine optimisation is that it is laborious and time consuming. The time required to generate links and tweak the web pages and keywords to get the desired high rankings could take up to three months or more before tangible benefits of the SEO campaign start showing up. Pay Per Click Search Engine Advertising has some clearly defined benefits that the marketer can experience upfront without a protracted waiting period. The key benefits include: * Immediate flow of visitors: Perhaps the most significant benefit of a PPC campaign is that it offers an immediate influx of qualified visitors, leads and sales, thereby ensuring quick results, sometimes within hours. Further, if the keyword being optimised through the Search Engine Optimisation Campaign is highly competitive, it is best to take the PPC route. In fact, a pay per click advertising programme is the best option for marketers seeking quick results and a good return on investment while waiting for a parallel Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) programme to ramp up and achieve critical mass. * Affordability backed by Flexibility: The budget for a PPC campaign is decided by the marketer. Moreover, there are no minimum spend levels to be adhered to. Depending on the marketer's traffic goals, and the capacity of the sales funnel, one can have a budget of anywhere from Rs. 20,000 to Rs. 5,00,000 per month. And here is the icing on the cake -- if one is not satisfied with the kind of leads being generated, one can immediately discontinue the campaign. * Enhanced Reach: In addition to addressing the search traffic across Search Engines, through a PPC campaign one can also address other websites and portals that have affiliate marketing programmes with Search Engines. Let's illustrate this with an example: if a marketer undertakes a PPC campaign with Google, not only will the ads appear on the Google search results (for this, the marketer needs to enable this feature), but will also appear on sites such as Business World, Economic Times, Money Control, etc. This ultimately leads to higher traffic being generated to the marketer's website. Thus, as a short term strategy, Pay Per Click offers a clear advantage over SEO. However, the foremost disadvantage is the cost factor. Depending on the current market demand for the desired keywords and clicks, the PPC campaign could generate tons of traffic and could end up costing hundreds, even thousands of Rupees per day. With various optimisation strategies, one could, of course, lower the costs, but on a long term basis, natural search engine optimisation will offer higher returns. To conclude: the best way for a marketer to experience the benefits of SEO and PPC would be to commence a Search Engine Optimisation campaign -- and simultaneously obtain a flavour of PPC while the SEO campaign is gaining ground.

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