Are you wondering if you should go with SEO or PPC to bring traffic to your online store? SEO is often viewed as the snake oil of the digital marketing world.
This is because many people give up on their ecom SEO campaign way too soon and never get to see profitability. PPC is viewed as a difficult, but easy to set-up form of digital marketing that can lead to instant gratification.
So is SEO or PPC better for online stores? It depends on your goals. For online stores, SEO typically leads to a higher ROI in long-term, but PPC ads have the potential to make an online store profitable much faster.
If you are interested in a scaling an online store quickly and want to sell it after growing a big customer list, then PPC ads are likely your best route.
However, long-term thinkers would be way better off with SEO because it will make an online store more profitable and will provide way more cash flow in the future. Also, the content creation that is essential to an SEO campaign for an online store will help with branding and customer retention.
In this post, I will go in depth on the pros and cons of SEO and Google PPC ads for online stores. The differences between SEO and PPC ads will also be listed.
Main Difference Between SEO and PPC For Online Stores
PPC (pay-per click) ads cost money and SEO for online stores leads to free traffic that comes from organic rankings on the search engine results pages. They are usually (but not always) below the PPC ads if PPC ads exist on the page. See the screenshot below as an example.
Benefits of SEO for Online Stores
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the art of optimizing your Shopify or Woocommerce online store for search engines. Google is the main search engine and has dominated the search engine market. It maintains a 92.47 percent market share as of January 2021.
This study shows that the top ranked website will get about a third of the clicks on the search engine results page’s organic section. Getting visibility in through ecommerce SEO is not very easy.
However, once you have positioned your ecommerce brand near the top or at the the top of the search engine results page, you will have a strategic advantage over your competitors that trust paid search.
SEO Builds Credibility for Online Stores
Having your online store appear in search engine results page (or SERPs) will build credibility with people that are looking for your ecommerce brand. There are a multitude of users that will trust organic search results instead of a paid ad.
If you appear in the top ten on the search engine results page, then you get a nice stamp of credibility. Having decent reviews can make this process easier.
SEO Increases Awareness for Online Stores
Increased organic traffic to your ecommerce brand brings more opportunities to boost awareness with regard to your online store.
Making your online store visible in the search engine results page through using your target keywords naturally aligns your brand with potential buyers.
SEO Makes Online Stores Seem More Trustworthy
Searchers can find your online store and you can build trust with them through content creation. Your brand can become an authoritative voice for a given topic.
It’s the same situation for logos. Your online store’s logo outranking other logos makes it easier for people on the search engine to remember your brand and they will perceive it to be more authoritative.
SEO Brings in FREE Traffic To Online Stores
Moreover, the organic traffic that you get from Google results costs you nothing because it’s free. Actually, that is not completely true. It costs time, effort, and a maybe a backlinking or content marketing budget.
Overall, the ROI on an ecommerce SEO campaign that is properly managed will typically be higher than other marketing campaigns. This is because the leads are cheap and competition is relatively low since many ecommerce store owners are afraid to commit to an ecommerce SEO campaign.
This study shows how SEO has the lowest cost per lead of any form (or channel) of digital marketing.
Most ecommerce store owners will stick to paid advertising or influencer marketing because they want results fast and do not mind spending money on leads that are relatively over priced.
SEO Brings in Consistent Traffic To Online Stores
As long as your pages are still indexed in Google, traffic and leads will continue to flow to your online store. Also, organic rankings positioning are relatively stable and PPC ads positions continuously change.
This is due to your competitors’ bidding tactics. A well-optimized site with a good link profile and top-notch content can maintain its organic position for months and possibly years.
Ecommerce SEO Downsides
Ecommerce SEO is very hard to master and comes with many challenges that scare off many ecommerce store owners.
Only the most skilled SEO experts can maintain a competitive number one ranking for a long time. SEO certainly has some costs to it, but it also has a high pay off.
Believe it or not, over 1 billion people use Google’s search engine per month. There is a much higher percentage of people that are willing to click on the top ranked websites.
Ecommerce SEO Can Take Months To Payoff
The main downside is that takes six to twelve months on average to run an ecommerce SEO campaign. This is mainly because Google needs time to figure out how to rank a website. Some niches are much more competitive than others.
There are a wide variety of cases of organic traffic being hard to attain quickly. If you’re just starting a Shopify or Woocommerce store and the keywords that you want to dominate lead to search engine results pages with website listings from Amazon, eBay, and Alibaba, then you may need to pivot your entire ecommerce SEO strategy.
Content Marketing For Online Stores Can Be Very Complicated
If you are planning to greatly improve your SEO strategy, then you should also look into creating high-quality content that will boost your average session time on your website (which is an SEO ranking factor).
Not every e-commerce businesses has a dedicated in-house SEO team that can take on content marketing and more. That’s where EcomDynamiX comes into the picture.
Google’s Penalties and Updates Can Lower Organic Ranking For Ecommerce Brands
As long as your SEO campaign is a whitehat one, then this disadvantage will most likely not effect your ecommerce SEO campaign. White SEO strategies involve using tactics that Google approves of while blackhat strategies are the opposite.
Algorithmic penalties involve the sanctioning of a website by one of Google’s algorithms. Algorithm updates might penalize sites with spammy backlink profiles or they might simply benefit PPC ads if Google wants to collect more ad revenue, for example.
If Google ads an extra 3 PPC ad spots near the top of the search engine results page, then people are less likely to find your website in the organic rankings.
Manual penalties are given to websites by Google employees that manually check websites for:
- Hidden text
- Thin content with zero or little added value
- Keyword stuffing
- Unnatural backlink profile
- Unnatural links that are sent from your website
- Spammy structured markup (schema)
- Spammy user generated content
- Website that is hacked website
- Content that is pure spam
After fixing whatever lead to a manual penalty to improve rankings, you should contact Google so that they can reevaluate your website.
All manual penalties will stay in place until Google’s spam team has gone through and approved your website. By clicking the “Request a Review” link in the notification, you can ask them to reevaluate your website.
Google’s Censorship Can Impact Ecommerce Brands
This is something that rarely happens. If you are in a niche or industry that Google disapproves of, then Google can de-index your website from their search engine.
If you say anything bad about Google, then they can go after your website. Facebook and Twitter can legally censor users with little to no consequence as well.
Benefits of PPC for Online Stores
Google PPC (Pay-Per-Click) ads allow you to showcase your products on Google. The ads will appear on either the top or the bottom of the search engine results page. Your advertising payments will be determined by the CPC (Cost Per Click).
If your online store is about targeting a location with a relatively small set of keywords, then Google PPC will helps you generate more leads that are within your budget. Moreover, you can fully optimize your PPC accounts to decrease costs and boost your ROI.
Also, PPC ads generate traffic faster than organic search rankings. This one of the biggest benefits of PPC ads.
Google PPC ads are advertisements in one of the purest forms. They give users much more control over their marketing messages. Take into consideration that website links, locations, calls, bullets and price points need to be used to create ads that produce a high ROI.
Google PPC A/B Testing For Ecom Stores
PPC lets you split-test your ads, CTAs, and landing pages. You can collect insights from the results of your A/B tests and make decisions that boost your digital marketing efforts.
Also, if you want to try marketing a new product or pitch a new marketing message, then you can run a short PPC ad campaign.
Split testing SEO-related code snippets like title tags, for example, is very difficult because Google’s algorithm is responsible for many variables that could make the test inconclusive.
Sometimes Google will not choose the title tag that is in the HTML code of a page and will use it’s own, A.I. generated title tag. This is especially true if your approved title tag is too long.
Target Very Specific Groups With PPC Ads
Set a limit and laser target keywords to appear in front of potential buyers. You can use the search keywords, language, weekday, time of the day, device, geography, and retarget customers that visited your website previously.
Your Online Store’s PPC Ads Will Show Up On the Top of the Search Engine Results Page
PPC ads results appear on the top of the search engine results page and they get 65% of clicks as compared to the organic results but only if they include keywords with purchase intent. Keep in mind that purchase intent keywords are usually more expensive to target.
Visual Product Advertisements For Your Online Store
Google allows users to create product listing ads when they want to sell a product. You can add your product’s best image along with your company’s brand name like in the screenshot below. These ads boost click-through rates (CTRs) using features that you will not currently find in the organic search rankings.
Google Does Not Withhold Back Data For PPC Ads like They Do For Organic Rankings
Google does not let users see organic search-related data like keyword competition and exact search volume (they do provide estimations). PPC ads do not come with the same restrictions in the name of privacy.
You can utilize Google’s tools to analyze which keywords are leading to conversions. Plus, you will see what their CPC are. Keep in mind that some metrics are not exact like impressions.
Ecom Brand Visibility is Increased with PPC Ads
Paid ads help you get noticed by a more targeted audience. Even if your audience doesn’t click on your ads and do brand research, this will help your marketing efforts.
Downsides of Ecommerce PPC Ads
PPC ads have many downsides that restrict growth and can make your pockets empty. Google tries to add more and more features to ensure that they collect more ad revenue, but their are some downsides that do not seem to be turning into upsides anytime soon.
PPC Ads have a Higher Cost Per Lead Compared to SEO
As previously stated, leads generated through SEO are the cheapest of any digital marketing form. PPC is all about the ads budget, and you need to decide how much you would like to spend every daily on ads.
PPC can cost you a lot of your marketing budget. If you go after the entire country or run international campaigns, then the cost will shoot up exponentially.
Click Fraud Can Destroy Your Ecommerce Store’s Profits
“Click Fraud” is still a common problem as some ecom store owners use manual clicks or unethical software that simulates a person’s click from different IP addresses around the globe. Your ecommerce adversaries can rapidly rack up your click charges and destroy your budget.
Google has a system that can detect some of this fraudulent activity, but there are ways to evade the detection.
PPC Leads Have a Lower Conversion Rates Compared to SEO Leads
Eric Hoppe of Crowd Content claims that SEO leads to higher conversion rates:
“We’ve found that our conversion rate on organic traffic is substantially higher than with PPC. I believe this shows a stronger intent to purchase or convert among these searchers—and that an organic click is more valuable than a paid click.”
Check out this study where SEO and PPC conversion rates are broken down by industry.
Conclusion on the SEO vs. PPC Debate in the Ecommerce Space
My opinion is that SEO leads to a higher ROI in long-term, but PPC has the potential to make a website profitable faster. SEO is also an underrated form of digital marketing especially in the ecommerce world.
Influencers in the Ecom space usually talk about ads and influencer marketing especially since they know that the beginners that they target want instant gratification and do not want to invest in long-term strategies like SEO.
I’m biased as an SEO expert, but I do see PPC as a great way to market products especially in the ecom space where product images can appear in the ads.
SEO and PPC can be used in tandem to produce a very profitable store as well. Contact us today to learn how we can boost your organic traffic and bring in consistent results.