Online advertising and search engine optimization (SEO)

Search engine optimization, or SEO, considers how potential customers find your products or services in search engines. SEO is by far the best way to influence greater search engine visibility to produce a consistent stream of quality traffic to your website.

Search engines are the gateway through which potential customers find your product. Placing your business in the top ten search results for relevant keywords is crucial for your business if you want to be a competitor in your industry.

After implementing a well-researched, well-executed personalized SEO campaign, your business will see a massive influx of new leads. 

SEO or Online Advertising: two different approaches

Any real entrepreneur very quickly finds himself confronted with the need to promote his activity and find customers and get people talking about his brand.

This is when most entrepreneurs discover the benefits of Digital Marketing. But the different levers each offer advantages and disadvantages and are more or less adapted according to the need and the objective sought.

Of course, every project is different. But one question always comes up if you want to increase your turnover: how to choose between SEO or online advertising.

How to increase website traffic?

Opinions diverge as we have seen, but certain lines of work are essential:

• Build a good website or hire a web developer
• Define your targeted keyword strategy,
• Offer many qualitative contents
• Work on the technical aspects of SEO  on your company’s website (titles, tags, keyword density, etc.),
• Increase the number of quality inbound thematic links…

Even if you put all your energy and know-how, working on SEO is a deep, long, and uncertain task. Indeed, it does not depend only on you.

On the one hand, Google can have a core update and change its rules of ordering the Search results (SERP) at any time.

On the other hand, your competitors can also work on their SEO. They may even put more budget and effort into it than you do.

To conclude, the results of work on SEO are therefore long to set up and require patience, rigor, and tenacity. Nevertheless, this remains the best way to attract traffic for free and in a sustainable way.

Online advertising

Before answering the question of SEO or online advertising, let’s define what online advertising can offer entrepreneurs starting their businesses.

Whether with Facebook Ads or Google Ads, carrying out advertising campaigns is also a Digital Marketing lever just as complex as the SEO mentioned above.

If it is not a question here of cost and expenses, online advertising brings 2 enormous advantages compared to traditional advertising and natural referencing.

Today, online advertising is accessible to any type of business as soon as it has something to sell! By any type of business, I mean small businesses, artisans, local, national, or multinational businesses, including online businesses (e-commerce, blogs)…

Indeed, it is possible to advertise on Facebook Ads for 10 $ per day for example! This is also true on Google Ads.

Of course, with such a tiny budget, you’re never going to get extraordinary results, but it still opens doors.

Whatever your advertising budget, you can therefore reach new prospects by displaying your products and services to a very targeted population, interested in your field of activity or presenting a need for your product and/or service offer.

Get immediate results

Another advantage of online advertising: is that of giving you very short-term results. Unlike an SEO campaign that takes several months to bear fruit, a well-configured advertising campaign brings in customers immediately.

Your target sees your products or services, they click and can order immediately even if you launched your activity the same morning!

How to effectively combine SEO or online advertising?

Choosing between SEO and online advertising is therefore not an effective strategy. Indeed, it comes down to choosing between the short and long term.

As you know, a good marketing strategy must both:

• Deliver solid results over the long term,
• But also generate sales and turnover in the short term.

Indeed, it is very often a question of the survival of the activity. Doing only for the long term is a luxury that many entrepreneurs cannot afford.

Similarly, being dependent on paid traffic from online advertising is not sustainable over time. Indeed, the cost of acquisition is generally high.

Choosing between SEO and online advertising is therefore an important strategic error in Digital Marketing in most cases. It is in fact rather 2 complementary activities.

On the one hand, you are working on the foundations of your online presence, your presence on search engines, and your ability to generate traffic naturally and for free on your site…

… on the other, you get results, sales, customer testimonials, and experience immediately. in this way, your activity runs, even if it is quite expensive, which may not be sustainable over time.

Online advertising is obviously not reserved for new businesses. But in the context of creating an activity, it is a formidable weapon to be used wisely.

The Issue of budget

Finally, there is also the case of a very small budget. If your business is just starting and you don’t have a sufficient marketing budget, then it is better to really choose between SEO and online advertising.

It is always better to concentrate on a certain subject than to chase several hares at once. There is a learning curve necessary before obtaining your first results. And it’s in your interest to reach it as soon as possible.

And for once it’s up to you to choose between SEO or online advertising, between short and long term, between testing an opportunity quickly or building… everything depends on your project and your time horizons!

Should you continue to advertise online if your business is already well established?

Yes, because it is essential for a company to continue to recruit new customers and improve its visibility. Online advertising is also perfect for highlighting a promotion or a one-time offer. And you have to unless you call yourself Apple. 

Indeed, SEO is by nature slow to set up, if your exceptional offer lasts all year long as we sometimes see, you only tarnish its effect and weaken its strength.

Conclusion on the dilemma between SEO and online advertising

To summarize the point and conclude about the choice between SEO and online advertising, I would say in summary that the 2 are perfectly complementary:

• With SEO, you work on a natural and free acquisition of your visitors which will ensure qualified, consistent, and permanent traffic,
• With online advertising campaigns, these short-term actions generate traffic immediately and increase the visibility of your brand very quickly (from the launch). On the other hand, this requires a much higher acquisition cost.

The best marketing strategy is therefore to combine these 2 levers. Indeed, in general, combining the short with the long term is often the healthiest approach.

And for those who believe in the impact of Google Ads campaigns on your SEO, I can tell you, there is non.