To make your website a success, you need visitors. There are two techniques used to drive additional traffic – paid search engine advertising (also known as PPC), and search engine optimisation (SEO). But which is right for you?
PPC
At the top and right of every search results page are a set of “sponsored results”. Website owners pay to have their site appear here when people search for a specific term. PPC stands for “pay per click” because the search engine charges you a fee for each time your website is promoted, and again for each time a user clicks through.
PPC is a great way to boost awareness of your website quickly, although the cost of clicks can be quite expensive depending on which words you want to be “found” for.
SEO
Search engine optimisation is a collection of techniques designed to make your website more attractive to websites, encouraging them to rank your site higher for free. This involves carefully shaping your website content and design to highlight specific phrases, and encouraging other website to link back to yours.
SEO is an ongoing process and can take months before the benefits start to become apparent.
Using both
For the best results, you should probably consider a mix of both SEO and PPC. PPC will help drive traffic to your site while your ongoing SEO efforts begin to gain momentum. Over time you should then be able to scale back your ad spend and focus on “free” search results.