Google Ads and SEO are the main components of Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and are among your most valuable tools when running digital marketing campaigns.
They have differences and similarities, and there are situations in which you should use them together or separately, depending on your business and marketing goals.
What is Google AdWords?
If you are new to digital marketing, you may have heard people talking about PPC, Google Ads, and terms like CPC, bids, and campaigns without knowing what these buzzwords mean.
Don't worry. The purpose of this post is to clear things out. Let's get started.
Google Adwords (now known as Google Ads) is an advertising platform owned by Google.
Advertisers can use this platform to position their ads in the Google Search Result Pages, Google Products (YouTube, Gmail, Discover), and thousands of other websites participating in the AdWords program as publishers (that’s Google Adsense).
As an advertiser, you can choose to pay when someone clicks on your ad (Cost Per Click or CPC) or when people see your ad (CPM or Cost per Thousands of Impressions).
The Google Ads system works like a big auction where advertisers compete for available advertising places.
What is SEO?
or SEO involves getting better rankings in the search engine results pages of Google, Yahoo, Bing, and other major search engines.
To achieve that, you must ensure your website is search engine friendly.
A search engine-friendly website can be ‘read’ easily by search engines and easily used by users.
You can read my SEO tips for the most important configurations you need to apply to your website to make it search engine friendly, but the general idea is to have a fast and functional website with unique content that offers a good experience to the end-user.
Google Ads Vs. SEO
Now that you have a general idea of Google Ads and SEO, let’s see how they compare:
- Google Ads traffic is paid, while organic SEO traffic is free.
- Google ads appear on the top of Google Search Results, and under certain conditions, you can get one of those ad positions, but with SEO, you have to work much harder to get one of the top positions in the organic search results.
- Google Ads is more immediate than SEO since you can create advertising campaigns almost instantly and start getting targeted traffic, while with SEO, you need a lot more time (especially for new websites) to get good rankings and traffic.
- With Google Ads, it is easier to calculate the ROI, while with SEO, it is more difficult because many more factors play a role, not just ad spending and revenue.
- When you stop your Google Ads campaigns, traffic also stops, but once you start getting organic traffic with SEO, this will continue in the long term.
- With Google Ads, you can target many keywords simultaneously, while with SEO, you need to focus on a few keywords for the best results.
- With Google Ads, you can advertise on other Google websites and websites that use Google Adsense, but the results from SEO are only for the search results pages.
You can also read my previous article: What is the difference between SEO and PPC for more examples of how these two tools differ.
Which is Better? SEO or Google Ads
New companies can start with Google Ads.
When we started as a pure SEO agency, the main goal of our internet marketing campaigns was to help our customers get traffic from Search Engines through SEO.
This is still our primary goal today, but through the years and from our experience working with clients in different niches, we realized that business owners sometimes need results faster and more immediately, and this is where Google Ads comes into play.
The biggest advantage of Adwords over SEO is that it can generate results faster.
You will have to pay for each visit you get from Google Ads, but if your campaigns are profitable, you can justify the investment in PPC and meet your business objectives.
Google Ads is ideal for startups and new companies that want to get targeted traffic quickly to make sales, find new customers, or even test their products, procedures, website effectiveness, and any other component in their sales or marketing processes.
The above is true if you use Google Ads wisely and carefully. It is very easy to start spending money on Google Ads, and if you don’t have proper monitoring and control tools, you will end up making losses instead of profits.
What I always tell my clients about Adwords is that if you don’t use it correctly, it will be like playing in a Casino where you spend money with the wishful thinking that sometimes you will get it back, but you never do!
So, while the system is easy to use (so that you spend more) if you don’t have the knowledge and experience to run Google Ads Campaigns, save your money and hire professional companies (preferably Google Ads Partners) to do it for you.
This is the best approach so that you don’t lose money but benefit from the use of Google Ads.
Don’t forget about SEO.
While it is a good idea to start with Google Ads because it’s faster, you should also begin working with SEO, Content marketing, and social media for best results. These 3 tools are all you need for long-term online success.
Content marketing will help you create the right content, SEO will help you optimize your content for search engines and get more organic traffic, and social media will promote your SEO-optimized content to a wider audience.
Should I use Adwords and SEO at the same time?
Some people argue that you don’t need to use Google Ads when you get SEO traffic, but this is the wrong approach.
Even if you have good rankings, you can still use Google Ads and get more exposure for the same keywords that you get SEO traffic.
You can measure the performance of your Google Ads campaigns, and if they are profitable, you can even increase your budgets for a higher ROI.
So, which is best for marketing, SEO or Google Ads?
The answer is straightforward: both. Use Google Ads to start getting traffic and, in parallel, work on your SEO, content marketing plan, and social media campaigns so that you get organic traffic and visits from social networks.
Conclusion
Google Ads and SEO are not competitors but two powerful tools available in your digital marketing arsenal.
You can use Google Ads when you want traffic fast but need SEO for long-term and sustainable online success.
