• Introduction

Which is better? Google Ads or SEO? Today I’ll go over which may be the more effective method to incorporate into your internet marketing strategy in 2021 and beyond. 

This will serve as a general overview of the pros and cons of both choices as well as some further recommendations on how to get the most out of both.

If you find this information useful and want to incorporate either of these into your strategy, but don’t have the time to do it yourself, consider letting us help your business by visiting simpledevco.com or shoot me an email at jordan@simpledevco.com and make sure to include the keyword “simple” to receive a special introductory rate.

• An Overview of Both

Google Ads and SEO (or search engine optimization) both have their own benefits and drawbacks. They do similar things, but in much different ways. 

Google Ads is a PPC (pay per click) campaign that you effectively bid against other businesses or organizations who are targeting the same keywords. Google will choose which ad to show based on the user’s search, and this can vary widely in terms of cost, and won’t always give you the results that you want.

SEO drives traffic to your website or blog organically. The way that it does this is by way of content creation that’s optimized with specific keywords to show up in search results for a subject based on that relevant keyword. So if you write a piece of content, preferably long-form, or “10X Content” (I’ll be going over that in a future video) and optimize the post for specific keywords, you’ll attract the most relevant audience for that piece of content.

• Search Engine Optimization

SEO is extremely powerful, and insanely important. When you are starting the process of creating content for your website, you’ll need to choose relevant keywords for your industry and niche that will attract your target audience. “it’s not strictly the volume of visitors coming to your website every month that matters, but how qualified they are to be your clients or customers. If you’re an accident attorney serving the Central Coast, you wouldn’t want 3k monthly visitors from Canada that are interested in a divorce attorney.”

A huge bonus of SEO is the fact that it takes a very long time for the content you write to become irrelevant. If you write a piece of content that follows Google’s E.A.T. rule, you’re not only more likely to rank higher in the search results, but you’ll stay there longer. I’ll be going over Google’s E.A.T. rule more in depth in a later video.

A small caveat with SEO is it takes a pretty long time for your website to start seeing the results of your hard work. It can take hours, sometimes over 6 hours for best results, to create an authoritative piece of content that will be truly relevant to your user base, and can take up to 6 months or even sometimes a year for the traffic to start coming in. 

The good news is that good things come to those who wait, and the longer your success takes to be realized, the longer it will last. So if you take the time to build up a fantastic list of content on your site, don’t be discouraged by the length of time it will take to start seeing results. 

The results will come. 

• Google Ads

Google Ads can be incredibly effective, but also incredibly expensive. If your business has a large marketing budget, and you don’t mind wasting some of that money to get results quickly, then you can hop right into a PPC campaign.

Now this isn’t to say that Google Ads should only be used by businesses with large budgets, but if you are looking for quick results and don’t want to spend too much time researching the exact keywords that will give you the best results, then you can use Google Ads before jumping into SEO.

Google has made it much easier now to see good results from PPC campaigns, they took out a lot of the guesswork that goes into it, but you will see a lot more beneficial results if you spend the time to research the correct keywords to use that are relevant to your industry or niche. 

• Which Method Is Best For My Business?

If you’re wondering which one to use, or in what order to use both, my recommendation will change based on the size of your business, your budget, and your commitment to success in the long-term. 

Most Bang For Buck (Sacrificing Time)

If you’re just starting out, have very little money, but a lot of time, maybe you’re working a main job and you’re just starting out with your side hustle as a business, and know how to write quality content on subjects that you’re well-versed in, start with SEO first. 

By creating quality content, you will attract your target audience and begin to generate more leads. Once you convert these leads into clients and start to see more money flowing into your accounts, then you can create a targeted PPC campaign that supports your website. 

An important note here is that even if you’re wildly successful with SEO and are super confident in your ability to set up a PPC campaign, you should always do A/B testing to find out what type of ad is the most effective.

Bigger Budget

If you’re a larger business, or an individual just starting out but have a lot of cash on hand, start with Google Ads, but quickly move into SEO. If you’re pressed for time, it would be in your best interest to hire a marketing agency to create relevant content for your website and correctly optimize it for your target audience’s keyword searches. 

Google Ads can give results quickly, but will quickly suck up your budget, so be cautious, and try to remember to check it every 3 days or so to make sure it isn’t eating away at your wallet.

An important note about Google Ads: even if your ad copy is fantastic and people actually click your ad and visit your website, it’s incredibly unlikely that you’ll see an increase in sales or conversions if your website is not effective.

Consider hiring a professional web designer to take advantage of their knowledge of effective funnel creation; that way, when your PPC campaign is generating site traffic, they’re more likely to convert on your beautiful website.

• Wrapping Up

So that was a brief overview of the differences between Google Ads and SEO, and the benefits and drawbacks of both. Hopefully you learned a little bit more and can come to a conclusion about which would be more beneficial for your business.

If you have any questions or comments, please put them down below, and consider subscribing, liking this video, and turning on notifications to stay up to date with our new videos. We release new content every Monday and Friday.

Instead of taking the time to set up a Google Ads campaign yourself, or creating content to optimize for SEO, consider letting us help your business by visiting simpledevco.com or shoot me an email at jordan@simpledevco.com and make sure to include the keyword “simple” to receive a special introductory rate.