SEO vs. advertising: which one should you choose to increase the visibility of your business?

“Would you rather recommend SEO or paid advertising to increase website traffic?” This is a question I get a lot from business owners looking to attract more visitors to their website.

It’s very common, after launching a new business, to reach a point where you have created a website and social media accounts, designed a logo, printed business cards… You may have even set up a newsletter and started posting articles on your blog. You also post regularly on social media to promote your business. You have followed all the main recommendations to increase its visibility, but nothing seems to work.

It’s perfectly normal. If for some people this is all it takes to see results, because they already have an online community or due to luck, for many others it’s not enough. What happens is: you are creating content, but you also need an audience to interact with it, otherwise you won’t achieve any results. Let’s take a restaurant as an example: the kitchen is equipped, the cook is ready, the menu is printed, the tables are set… but if no customers show up, all the groundwork is pointless.

If in our example the lack of customers is obvious, on social media you can see the results you achieved by looking at the number of followers or at the post statistics. For your website you can use a free tool like Google Analytics. If you notice that your website has few users, the number one priority is to increase website traffic. The more visitors you have, the more leads and clients you will have.

So, what is the most effective way to increase website traffic? There are two main options: SEO or paid advertising. But among the two, which one should you choose?

Let’s take the example of the restaurant again. SEO would amount to physically moving the restaurant, to a tourist street or to the heart of a business district at lunch, counting on the number of people on the street to naturally fill the room. Just as it is not so simple to move a restaurant, implementing a successful SEO strategy for a website also takes a lot of work.

On the other hand, advertising would amount to signaling the existence of the restaurant through billboard ads spread throughout the city. This way, only people who are really interested will actually visit the restaurant.

Ideally, the two strategies should work together. SEO and advertising complement each other and will help you achieve different goals. But often, especially when launching a new business, it is better to define priorities and not spread yourself too thin, as it’s more expensive and time-consuming. Since your core business is your number 1 priority, it’s best to focus on a single strategy and implement it effectively.

So here are some key pros and cons to help you decide.

SEO

Pros

✔️ It’s free and you can do it yourself if you know the basics of SEO and content marketing.
✔️ It provides long-term results. The initial setup, although time-consuming, will constantly generate website visits in the future and your content will always be visible on search engines.
✔️ Ad blockers can’t stop your website from being displayed on search engines.

Cons

❌ It usually takes months or even years before you start to see the results.
❌ The setup (content creation) also takes a lot of time.
❌ Since it’s free, you can expect more competition than with paid advertising.
❌ You need to constantly adapt to the search engine’s algorithm and update your content according to the latest changes.

 

Paid Ads

Pros

✔️ Setting up the campaigns is relatively quick (more or less depending on the platform).
✔️ If they are set up correctly, you will see the results almost immediately or within the first few days.
✔️ Users are more likely to convert than those coming from SEO. The targeting makes it possible to reach people who are interested and therefore more ready to purchase soon. In addition, for certain platforms such as search engines, since users are already in the process of searching for a product or service, they are even more likely to make a purchase.

✔️ You can target users based on different criteria relevant to your business: interests, age, location, etc.

Cons

❌ Depending on your budget, ads can be quite expensive, especially in the more competitive markets.

❌ The results usually wear off within a few days after the end of the campaign.
❌ Some people are reluctant to advertising and will probably not click on your ads. Additionally, overexposure to your ads might have a negative impact on your brand image. This is why fine-tuning is necessary when creating and optimizing your campaign.

 

Conclusion

You now know the main characteristics of SEO and paid advertising, the two most common strategies used to increase a website’s traffic and improve visibility. I hope this article helps you choose the best strategy for your brand and save precious time for your core business.

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