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Which Is More Affordable: SEO or PPC?

Everyone in the internet marketing business is on a constant quest to find the most inexpensive way to get traffic to their site so they can start making money. To that end, we constantly hear people asking which is more affordable: SEO or PPC? The answer, as you might expect, is more complicated than you really want it to be.

The problem is that ‘affordable’ means different things to different people. Let’s say, for example, that you came to the table prepared and you started your online business with $10,000 cash in the bank to get started with. You can easily spend $2000 on a high-quality website and another $1000 on content — but you’ve still got plenty left over to live on while you shell out another $1000 each month on killer SEO. You can afford to wait a little while for customers, but when your money runs out you’re going to need the best traffic-per-dollar that you can get.

You want to invest in SEO.

On the other hand, let’s say you’re doing online business on the side while you work a 9 to 5 job. You don’t have a lot of money up front, but you’ve set aside $150/week to spend developing your online business. You need your profits back right away or your expenses will outpace your ability to spend. You’re not as concerned with traffic-per-dollar, but you are definitely interested in a speedy return.

You want to invest in PPC — specifically, in a PPC management firm.

Of course, you may be in a position to do both, and there’s nothing wrong with that — SEO and PPC are perfectly good neighbors and they work well together. The PPC brings in immediate, consistent, targeted traffic while the SEO builds up to a point at which it can sustain your business, at which point you can drop the PPC in favor of your own natural, organic traffic.

But when the final analysis comes in, the question of SEO being more or less affordable than PPC depends entirely on your financial situation. Based on the market numbers (80% of the money spend on search engine marketing goes to PPC and only 20% to SEO), most companies are looking for that quick return, even if it’s more expensive up front than SEO.

100 thoughts on “Which Is More Affordable: SEO or PPC?”

  1. Chester

    I want my site to be advertised in online classifieds. Some SEO companies say they will put me in at least 50,000 places. Is this for real? How can I check to see if they did this?

  4. wwwavid360gamercom

    For example, an organizations owns a variety of magazines and on the cover of one the magazines related to pop music promotes a magazine related to rock and this other magazine is also owned by the same organizations. How is this related to the organization and how does the organizations affect the magazine?

  5. Mak Sultan

    i am looking for cheap search engine optimization services…please only recommend me to use one that you have personal experience with. thanks

  6. nick s

    Can anyone help me?? I want to know some information. In the web design agency, which internet services are they required to run their company functions. Why? Thanks so much for helping me… 🙂

  7. Mak Sultan

    Can someone recommend me a company providing affordable website development and SEO services. Charlotte web development company will be plus for me.
    Thanks in advance!
    The web design firm must have full time PHP programmers and have experience with ecommerce and shopping cart websites.

  9. Flash Funk

    I am wanting to start up a webstore selling products. I am very good at creating websites but have never really dabbled with search engine optimizing (SEO’ing) them, and if I were to create a store I think it would be vital to make it optimized for search engines. Also, I have never included a shopping cart on any of my websites apart from a paypal cart, which is very simple to include. I was wondering what books/software I should read to learn to SEO my website effectively and learn to advertise it on the net etc?

  12. Victoria T

    I have apprently really dark skin as i found out today.
    I tried: L;oreal true match n8-capuccino-too orange
    revlon colorstay-too orange plus too runny
    rimmel 25 hour-too white-i bought this the other week so i gave it away

    I have neutral undertones according to the l’oreal true match test
    i wanted to try the revlon colorstay whipped but they did not have it at my boots or superdrug.
    Please DO NOT suggest US brands as i live in the UK
    Thank you
    Also i am dark skinned as you can tell
    I have acne prone skin, dry
    Thank you in advance
    Oh forgot to mention i want something long lasting
    DOES NOT rub on clothes
    ALSO if you can help me with this POWDER problem too
    I am also looking for a pressed powder to set the foundation.

  14. Denali

    Can anyone recommend me an affordable freelance seo expert professional in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India based on your experience with them who would be able to deliver results for my business sites and help me get better rankings for my business keywords in search engines.
    Thank You

  15. Tyler H

    Hello friends,

    I know this might be a little elementary, but what is the main difference between SEO and PPC? Do you consider PPC to be part of SEO?

  16. Scott Bull

    I am interested in mobile marketing subject and want to do my dissertation (thesis) on it. However I cannot decide on a possible research question to address in my research. Any suggestions are appreciated!!!

  18. PillowMan1234

    Does any one know of 3 good places to advertise on line? I need 3 places that have a lot of visitors like craigs list.

  20. musicistabest

    HI…
    I have completed my graduation and want to make a carrier in IT field…well I heard a lot about SEO (Search engine optimization) but really not able to find much more abot SEO as a career…. well as I m from Mumbai, India….I have given interview also in Avanindra SEO services in Mumbai, India….and I got selected to but not able to decided is SEO will be a good career….Please need ur suggestion….thanks in advance for the suggestion and the time for ur help……………

  21. superdork

    I want a easy way to learn SEO. Because I am not fluent in English. I would like a way like videos, step by step images.

  22. Beavis

    I have my own website about selling coffee, and I need help promoting my website. What good SEO company can help me?

  23. JOHN KAISER PHD

    i want an seo service for my website in mumbai , can any one let me know a good and affordable seo company in mumbai ?

  25. evil chevy

    In high school I was told to NOT make much noise on the internet. But these days the direct opposite is being said and done through facebook, twitter, linkedin… etc. People say that these are our resources these days but I’m not seeing Twitter or facebook really bringing up any real local jobs… and Linked in has a total of 5 jobs in my local area posted for ANY random job.

    I was also taught to go in to each business I’d like to work with one by one and ask if they’re hiring. I tend to get a lot of “I don’t know’s” from managers and all the applications are done online. And it tends to just be a waste of gas money when I’m out of a job.

    So I’m left at a loss at what businesses are actually hiring in the first place. I suppose I could just pop onto Google Maps and drive around all the nearby towns in street view and look at all the businesses and think “Hmmm… maybe they’re hiring” and pop onto their website and see what my chances are. But that seems counter productive too.

    Monster.com, Careerbuilder.com, and pretty much any other job board is completely littered with nothing but one scam after another. And what legit jobs that are posted there… it seems like they’re all jobs that demand far more experience or college than I have — and even if I went to college, I’m not sure if that’d really help. It doesn’t seem to help anyone I’ve ever seen. And the most that I’ve ever gotten from places like Monster.com is the military and colleges calling me up because you’re forced to fill out military adds and college surveys in order to JUST fill out an application. Either way, you walk away from these job boards getting spammed or scammed.

    What is the real genuinely effective way of getting a job these days? To know WHO is hiring and WHAT jobs you qualify for and where you should and should not apply?

  26. Jairo

    hello friend…if u have any ideas how to increase the website search result…I heart seo is the best way to get optimize your website ranking as well help your site to generate my traffic from one to the best search result site like google,yahoo & msn. please help me to get how seo work & what are imp tools are use while optimizing site

  28. ScRSC

    I am currently looking for an SEO developer for my website. I recently just hired one based in India (which I found through elance.com), about 8 months ago. He was able to do onpage optimization and create 150 inbound links to my site, along with other SEO works such as article submission, directory submission.

    The problem is that the 150 inbound links were mostly PR0, PR1, and sometimes PR2. They were somewhat irrelevant to my niche market.

    I started with about a top 10-12 position with my main keyword, and now I am in the top 8-9 position. Not really that impressive in my opinion.

    Anyways, Ive been doing research online for SEO developers, and I stumbled upon this site called www(dot)internet(dash)empire(dot)com.

    I emailed them for a quotation and the person I am speaking with is very professional and great to speak with. It is a company based in Singapore. You can check their website.

    The guarantee he has is that he will guarantee me at the top 3 positions for 5 of my main keywords (I choose the big main keywords I have), or my money-back, full refund. This will be done in 6 months or less, and I will pay him the remaining 50% as the 5 keywords reach the top 3 position.

    The price is $2,500 USD.

    I wanted to ask the opinions here at Warrior Forum before I move forward with this. I believe that $2,500 is a little heavy on my end, but if it would mean getting the top 3 positions on Google.com for my top 5 keywords, this would be a wonderful deal.

    Thanks in advance for your inputs!

  29. zaclo

    I am doing some SEO work for a company and I have a few questions. First, there is a company trying to get my boss to pay $11,000 for SEO work. This company says they are doing the SEO by adding links and descriptions to web pages. On one page alone, there are a bunch of links towards the end of the page and this company is telling my boss that this is the “secret” to SEO. Now, the only way I can think how this would be effective, is by actually having the key term and description linked to the page and inserted into the met tag keywords. Whatever this company is doing it works, because one of our competitors is #1 in rankings on Google, Yahoo and others for basically all of the keywords we can think of that have to do with our industry. So, my question is, do these large SEO companies have some sort of agreement with the search engines where they get precedence in the search listings? Or is it more likely to get listed higher in the listings by having the keyword on your website multiple times (what they have is multiple keywords and when you click on one, there is a web page describing the term). I am being pressured to improve our ratings without the use of an SEO company, and I am really unsure of what I can do. Would an SEO program work well for me?

    I am not looking for a company to pay thousands of dollars to. I have been hired to do this and am looking for people who are not part of SEO companies to give me tips and advice.

  32. lets roll

    Over the years, I took SEO services from various companies promising top 5 positions on all major crawlers. This, of course, was never achieved by ANY of them. The issue, from my understanding of backlink creation, is that although the SEO company may submit our URL to high PR sites to create backlinks, it is never garanteed that the websites will actually accept to post the backlink.

    Recently, I’ve looked into Linkproz. They are “brokers” for a series of websites. They are asking 500$/month to create 15 backlinks on PR 4 sites and 5 backlinks on PR 3 sites. These links however need to be paid on a monthly basis. Meaning that once I terminate the service, the backlinks will disappear .

    I was wondering if this is worthwhile and if, say 8 months from now, I terminate the contact, my page ranking will drop on google ?

    If this is not a good method of increasing page ranking on google, does anyone have a reference for a good SEO company / person.

    Thank you,

  33. Gundown64

    I want some websites which provides latest seo tips & updates to help to promote my websites in search engine ranking .

  36. isk8at818

    Where can i find Freelance Seo Philippines | Search Engine Marketer?

    affordable seo in the philippines

  40. slipknot0129

    I have two small niche websites that I really want to raise their search engine ranking. My budget is pretty low, but I don’t want to get negative results with some blackhat garbage.

    Can anybody recommend someone to me?
    Here’s the term I want to rank for.

    “nerdcore”

    Can you give me a quote for that?

  43. altair

    I need tools that will track my progress on Google Plus local or Google Places? Please list the sites and their tools. Thanks so much!!

  44. Ssshhhh Im becoming aroused

    I have no online marketing experience and do not have any product to sale. I’ve been searching books to learn online marketing and most of them are good for business owners.

  46. Keegan

    So yeah I’ve heard about blackhat and whitehat SEO methods, and have a general idea of what they are, but can someone tell me exactly what those methods are?

  48. Jonny

    I want to find a good company which can do SEO well.
    Keywords as below:
    shoes
    wholesale shoes
    clothes bag
    requirements: in the first page on Google.com after SEO.

  49. Caltel T

    Actually I want to know about SEO, What is it?
    How it’s work? or why we need to do or learn SEO?
    after learn the SEO or know the SEO, how can I benifited?

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