, it takes a smart marketer (or, more realistically, a marketing team) to understand how to succeed at:
Technical SEO
On-page SEO
The generation of backlinks
Content marketing
The user experience
and much more!
However, ranking is no easy task. The complexity of SEO (at least compared to other channels) and the fact that Google’s algorithm is continually being updated means that it requires the right balance of a multitude of factors on your site to perform well.
And, as Jason Barnard states in our guide “What is SEO?”:
Getting the highest position in search results and how often you appear is a matter of merit; the engines will show the results they think are the best fit for their users.
— Jason Barnard
SEO is all about creating the best result on the entire web for a particular search, and those who are able to do this can achieve huge volumes of traffic.
The pros of SEO
But, in a nutshell, what are the main benefits of SEO that you should know when deciding where to invest your marketing budget?
Organic SEO can be one of the most expensive ways to improve your website's visibility and can put you in front of your target customers and clients when they search for businesses like yours.
Organic clicks are free, and they won’t cost you a cent. Of course, it requires an investment of time and resources, but there is no “click” cost, like when you have a PPC campaign. Doing good SEO is free traffic.
Once you've achieved strong rankings through an SEO strategy, you can see significant results. Your business is displayed to potential consumers 24/7, while PPC ads stop showing when your budget runs out or when you specify less profitable times of the day.
Organic SEO usually means more stability. Your rankings should remain relatively constant if you optimize your site properly. PPC ad positions can fluctuate a lot depending on your competitors' bidding strategy.
When you run ads, you're more inclined to spend your budget on middle (or bottom) funnel keywords to generate conversions as quickly as possible. This is most commonly the case for businesses that are working with limited marketing budgets. When it's SEO-based, you can create content that caters to different stages of the funnel without having to pay per click.
In many cases, SEO is a more expensive channel in the long run than PPC, as the cost of hiring a team or agency often remains the same even if traffic and conversions increase. This is not the case with PPC, as you pay per click.
On average, Google’s organic results attract more than ten times more clicks than paid results, according to a 2019 study by SparkToro . This means getting more traffic to your website without having to worry about advertising spend.