AdWords or SEO- What is the Best between Them?

SEO and AdWords are the movers and shakers of digital marketing. These two prime components play the pivotal role in running digital campaigns. Needless to say, they have downsides as well as upsides, so it will be pragmatic to use them together as and when required and separately as and when such a need arises. All you need to do in this regard is to focus on marketing goals.

Before to know when and how they should be best used, let’s have a definition of both these campaign types.

What is Google AdWords?

Google AdWords is an advertising platform owned by Google, offered to position advertisers ads in Google Search Results, Google Products such as YouTube, Gmail, etc. and also to millions of other websites that use AdWords program as publishers, i.e. Google AdSense. There are Cost per click or CPC, Cost per Thousands Impressions or CPM programs. As the names suggest, advertisers can choose any or all these programs. The whole things go as auctions. You must have heard PPC or Pay Per Click and AdWords and they are run on CPC, bids, campaigns, etc. Via participating in these auctions, advertisers can compete for the available advertising places.

What is SEO or Search Engine Optimization?

SEO has all to deal with ranking sites in the search engine results pages of Google, Yahoo, Bing, and on the rest of other major search engines. The first requirement to be a part of this campaign process for a site is to make sure that the site is developed as SEO-friendly. The site configuration requirements include easy-search-engine-readability and user-friendly. In all, a site has to be fast and functional with unique content offering end-users a good experience.

AdWords vs. SEO:

AdWords is for Google only. SEO is for all search engines. AdWords traffic is paid. SEO traffic is free. AdWords ads are positioned on the top and right side with yellow color distinguishing from the rest SERPs. SEO helps sites to appear among other SERPs in the organic search results. AdWords give immediate results. SEO gives slow but steady results, i.e. good rankings and traffic. For new websites, SEO takes much longer period of time. ROI from AdWords is easy to calculate. ROI from SEO is difficult to calculate as a lot of factors involved in it other than just spending and revenue. AdWords can promote a host of keywords at a time (the more, the more you’ve to pay). SEO can focus on promotion of few keywords at a time. AdWords allow advertising on other Google websites and on Google Adsense-user websites. Results from SEO are only for the search results pages.

What of them is the best for Campaign?

New companies must try out AdWords, because it can give them immediate results and it is the big advantage over SEO benefits. Startup sites can get targeted traffic faster for the goal of making sales, finding new customers, testing their products, etc. While doing it, site owners also need to concentrate on SEO, content marketing and social media marketing for better results and long-term online success.

AdWords and SEO are competitors no way, rather both of them are powerful ammo for digital marketing. SEO is for long-term and sustainable success while AdWords for faster traffic.