[Estimated read time: 12 minutes]
Each search query in Google is a demand signal for us digital marketers. If you know exactly what users are looking for, you can easily spot what they’re likely to buy.
From a common sense point of view, it’s quite logical to say that if users search for something more, they are able (and likely) to buy more. As it turns out, this correlation doesn't work within digital marketing niches. The commercial potential of a certain digital marketing service is not in direct proportion to the search volume it receives. In other words:
In the digital marketing industry, popularity doesn’t influence salability.
In the four digital marketing niches analyzed, I discovered:
- SEO is still the most desirable service and it has the highest chance of leading to conversion.
- Users want to know more about social media and content marketing, but they’re not ready to pay for it.
- Users who are searching for PPC are the most likely to be converted.
After digging further into this article, you’ll discover which digital marketing services are the best to sell and why. Armed with this data, you'll inform your strategy and have a leg up on your competitors.
Are the digital marketing services you’re selling the ones users are ready to buy?
Nowadays, we see how the digital marketing sphere is moving more and more towards content marketing and social media marketing (SMM). Everybody talks about these services — I'm no exception here. Moreover, there are plenty of digital marketers who are confident that without social media you can't rank properly in Google (I'm not one of them).
However, it's true that SMM and content marketing are now more important than ever. I was recently browsing through some BrightonSEO speeches and noticed that a substantial proportion of those talks were about content, SMM, copywriting, and even PR. I noticed the same situation with SMX events and many others. SEO seems like it's becoming less important.
But what about market demand? “What are our potential clients really interested in purchasing?” I asked myself. I conducted a study to find out.
User search behavior in SEO, PPC, SMM, and content marketing niches
I analyzed 4 digital marketing niches: SEO, PPC, content marketing, and SMM.
Why did I choose these niches? They represent the top four services offered in the US digital marketing industry. Recently, I conducted a survey regarding the current state of digital marketing agencies’ services, costs, and payment models. Among the insights that I gained, I determined the most and least popular digital marketing services that agencies are selling today.
Top digital agency services offered in the US market.
However, this data was gathered solely from service providers, including agencies and freelancers. After considering these results further, I came to the conclusion that they don't necessarily correlate with what clients want to buy. This all-important factor is completely missing from the data.
It was time to do some research on market demand via the most accessible information I could get: search queries.
Over 112,800 search queries were analyzed.
Because I’m experienced in keyword research, it was an easy task for me. I took the top four services offered in the US and created lists of keywords that are related to SEO, SMM, PPC, and content marketing. These keywords were mostly collected with the help of Serpstat and SEMrush. After I created a final list, I used Google Keyword Planner, which provided me with the most accurate cost-per-click and search volume metrics. In the following graphic, you can see sums of search volumes of queries concerning these niches:
To figure out how the popularity of a niche influences its commercial potential, I divided all queries related to these four niches into two groups – general queries and those that are agency-related. I put search queries in the “agency-related” category if they had any kind of commercial interest, e.g. if they included words like “fees,” “costs,” “prices,” “consultant,” “service,” “company,” “agency,” etc.
Agency-related queries spot the cases when users are ready to buy a service, while general queries are simply informational queries.
This distribution reflects the balance between what users are looking for versus what they are ready to buy, so here are my top hints:
1. SEO is still the most desirable service and it has the highest chance of leading to conversion.
SEO is a leading niche that attracts the highest search interest, as well as the most potentially commercial queries. If you're already selling SEO services, don't stop. And if you aren’t, perhaps you should start.
2. Users want to know more about social media and content marketing, but they’re not ready to pay for it.
The social media niche attracts a lot of searchers, but they're less likely to pay for it. Although content marketing generates quite high search volumes, users aren't likely to pay for it, either, as only four percent of queries are commercial.
3. Users who are searching for PPC are the most likely to be converted.
PPC, on the contrary, attracts less searchers; as we can judge from the sum of its search volumes, PPC is 10 times less popular than SEO. Nevertheless, it enjoys a higher frequency of agency-related keywords than the content marketing niche, and about 10 percent of its agency-related queries are likely to result in the purchase of PPC management services.
I also took a look at the most searchable and the most expensive keywords connected with these four niches and compared them. I assumed that they wouldn't correlate. Market demand is represented by search volumes, which means that the most searchable keywords are the queries a lot of people use.
However, the most expensive keywords mirror the most competitive niches, which have a really limited audience of potential clients. In order to determine if I was correct, I compared the top five most searchable and most expensive keywords in each of the four niches.
The most expensive keywords show low search volumes.
By looking at the table below, you can see that my hypothesis was absolutely correct. The higher the suggested bid, the lower the number of searchers.
The average search volumes of the top five most expensive keywords for each investigated niche do not exceed 100 searches.
|
Average Suggested Bid |
Average Search Volume |
|
|---|---|---|
|
SEO |
$91.5 |
100 |
|
PPC |
$87.74 |
40 |
|
Content Marketing |
$84.96 |
36 |
|
Social Media |
$107.4 |
28 |
Average search volume and suggested bid for the top 5 most expensive keywords
The opposite trend was revealed for the most searchable keywords, where the average suggested bid is less than $20 USD, but the average search volume exceeds 5,000 searchers.
Average Suggested Bid | Average Search Volume | |
|---|---|---|
SEO | $16 | 27,460 |
PPC | $18.2 | 5,340 |
Content Marketing | $15.2 | 26,640 |
Social Media | $6.8 | 27,980 |
Average search volumes and suggested bids for the top 5 most searchable keywords
Based on this data, it’s obvious that you'll pay less for keywords that have a larger search volume. Those keywords are informational search terms, rather than commercial ones.
8 facts about the most searchable and most expensive keywords
In the following diagrams you can see the top five most popular keywords and their search volumes in Google US, as well as the top five most expensive keywords and suggested bids.
SEO niche
Fact 1: A lot of people choose to deal with SEO issues themselves — at least, they try to with the help of special tools.
In the SEO niche, the most searchable keywords are general queries like “SEO” and “search engine optimization.” Also, a lot of users search for “SEO tools,” which is the fourth most searchable query. The search volumes of these keywords indicate that a lot of users would rather deal with SEO issues on their own, and that they’re looking for professional SEO tools. It's no secret that new analytic tools are released every day to compete for rule of their respective marketing niches. On the other hand, quite a lot of users search Google for “SEO company,” which is the fifth most searchable query, and that indicates they're eager to delegate SEO problems to paid professionals.
Fact 2: "SEO strategy template," with a CPC of $120.28, is used by Google to promote AdWords.
As for the top five most expensive SEO keywords, I found they're quite a curious set. The most expensive SEO-related keyword is “SEO strategy template,” which costs $120.28. This is a consulting query, so why has it become so expensive?
To find it out, I analyzed this query with the help of SEMrush’s Keywords Analytics tool. The results were eye-popping to me. The most mind-blowing thing here is Google’s actions. It turns out that Google itself is paying for this keyword to appear in paid search.
What’s even more interesting: Google is also paying for “SEO strategy template” to show the Adwords page in paid results. This would seem to prove that not all rules apply to everyone: we have to maintain the relevancy of landing pages and keywords for pages appearing in Google ads... but Google may not be subject to those restrictions. A campaign's quality score is based on CTR, ad relevance, and landing page experience. It's obvious that users searching for "SEO strategy template" have no interest in using Google AdWords!
Keyword ads history for "SEO strategy template"
PPC niche
Fact 1: Users don't want to deal with PPC on their own.
It's worth noting that the top five most expensive keywords are agency related. They are “PPC management agency,” “top PPC companies,” and “pay per click management service.”
Fact 2: The majority of the top five most expensive PPC keywords are agency-related search terms.
As we've already discovered, the PPC niche isn't the most searchable digital marketing topic; remember, it receives 10 times less searchers than SEO. Nevertheless, it receives a rather large proportion of agency-related queries. Ironically, people are ready to spend their time running SEO on their own in order to make it “free." But when it comes to ads campaigns, they prefer to find an agency or consultant.
Social media marketing niche
Fact 1: SMM education is getting popular.
In the social media marketing niche, all of the most searchable keywords are also general queries, like “social media” or “social media definition.” Also, almost all of the top five most expensive keywords for SMM are connected with education in the SMM sphere, namely obtaining a masters degree and online courses: “MBA in social media marketing,” “social media masters,” “masters in social media marketing,” and “online social media marketing course.”
Fact 2: Users have realized that managing social media also requires a strategy.
The query “What is social media strategy” appeared in the top five most expensive SMM-related keywords. I'm sure we can qualify this query as consultancy-related. There's a high probability that users who are searching for an SMM strategy are willing to hire an expert to master their SMM channels.
Content marketing niche
Fact 1: Contently is the ultimate leader.
In the content marketing niche, there's a brand search query in the top five most searchable keywords — “Contently" — which is a great example of how a company that provides content marketing software can achieve a wide presence in their niche. Also, one of the most searchable queries is “content management system.” I would say that such queries are likely to lead users to purchase professional content marketing services.
Fact 2: The most expensive keywords are related to content management tools.
The content marketing niche, unlike the other digital marketing niches I’ve analyzed, has a strong correlation between market demand and PPC rates. All of the most expensive keywords are also connected with content management systems: “content management system database,” “Drupal content management system,” “what does a content management system do,” and the niche query “healthcare content management.”
Obviously, many people are struggling to organize their content strategies and processes and are looking for a proper management system. The high prices for these keywords are in direct response to market demand.
Best SEO and PPC companies according to Google US
“That’s all interesting,” I thought, “but how does the situation look from the point of view of a potential client who's unaware of what’s going on in the market?”
Let’s suppose that this potential client is a perfectionist and they want to buy services from the very best company. They would ask Google "what are the best SEO and PPC companies?", so I did as well.
Hint: I bet you've never heard of a majority of them.
I analyzed Google’s SERPs for the queries “best SEO company” and “best PPC company” and chose agency domains that appeared in the first 10 results for each of these SERPs. You can see the results in the following graphics.
For the query “best SEO company,” agency domains that appeared in the first 10 results were Highervisibility.com, Boostability.com, Pagetraffic.com, and Outspokenmedia.com. I used SEMrush to analyze the organic search visibility these domains received from December 2013 to October 2015. 
Because SEMrush only reports on traffic based on keywords, I decided to add Similarweb and watch organic search visits for these domains for the year 2015. Actually, I discovered absolutely non-positive trends — you can see this in the graphic below.
The following digital agencies appeared in the first 10 results in Google’s SERP for the query “best PPC company”: Jumfly.com, Wordstream.com, and Straightnorth.com. For these domains, I analyzed data concerning their paid search visibility with the help of SEMrush. In the following graphic, you can see the results:
For more detailed data for 2015, I created a Paid Search Visits report for these domains with the help of SimilarWeb.
As you can see, the majority of the best SEO and PPC companies according to Google are not the ones you might expect. Google’s ranking algorithms, despite constantly being improved and moving increasingly towards human-centered logic, are still far from perfect.
View the complete infographic here.
SEO, PPC, content marketing, and SMM thrashed out
Now that we've discovered the current market demand for the most popular digital agency services, you can use this data to better understand your potential clients and create more effective strategies.
Here's a short recap to help kick off the conversation in the comments. The major findings are as follows:
- High search volumes for certain topics don't always mirror high-converting niches. You should always further investigate this correlation. (Note: You can easily apply this to any market’s landscape research, not just the digital marketing industry.)
- SMM and content marketing are relatively new spheres, and they enjoy very high search volumes compared to PPC and SEO. But be aware that SMM and content marketing receive less commercial queries that are likely to be converted.
- I have no idea why, but SMM education has become an extremely competitive niche. In fact, there are more experts who are ready to provide SMM courses than those who want to receive SMM education. If you want to sell SMM training courses, be prepared to enter into a highly competitive market!
- As for content marketing, content management services are now competing against content management systems; so far, Contently is winning this battle.
Do you have any other thoughts, questions, or ideas? I'm super excited to hear them — sound off in the comments!
Amazing post Alexandra - I feel like this topic isn't discussed enough but it's vitally important to consultants and agencies. I mean I named my services as "inbound marketing and SEO" to capture enough of the inbound marketing and content marketing language trends promoted over the past few years. But like you allude to, most often the clients know what SEO stands for, and it will take a few years to catch up to the new terms being thrown around by our industry.
It's like when the public sees fashion shows and wonders who would ever wear those clothes, but the industry insiders realize that those are the new trends and they'll filter down to influence consumer level fashion over the next few months.
Great research - extremely insightful.
Joe, yes, that's something we don't cover that much; or it might be discussed more often in real life, rather than here on the web. It's true that people are much slower in accepting new trends and ideas. For instance, we recently had a discussion with an agency from Slovenia, and they're struggling with persuading their clients to try ads on Twitter. Before that, they faced the same issue with Facebook. People are suspicious of jumping into something new, which is fairly understandable.
Oh, yeah! I love your idea about comparing digital marketing trends with the fashion industry. However, the same was true of smartphones before Steve Jobs gave an excellent speech; so we're going in rounds, and that's fine!
Thanks for sharing such a valuable post Alexandra !
Still Agency based search helps for selling the Product through PPC but to improving / stable ranking for Long time in Google Search: SEO is the best option.
Mike, thanks :)
PPC channel requires stable investment. However, SEO also requires constant improvement. And time is also money :)
As the owner of a search marketing agency this article was right on topic for me. I find that it's generally easier to sell SEO services to our direct clients and PPC services to the agencies we serve as a white label provider. SEO is a term that is well known among business people (though they might not really know much about SEO tactics and strategies - they at least understand its something they need).
Selling PPC requires a lot more education - which is why I find it easier to supply PPC services directly to agencies and designers - who understand the need for PPC but don't have the skill sets to be effective at offering the service (or have some poor designer/developer/SEO assigned to do Adwords for the few PPC clients they have).
Your findings pretty much support what I see in the marketplace every day.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts about this topic. I agree that PPC involves more knowledge and requires an additional budget, as well as paying for someone to run it. In future research, I hope I'll be able to add CTR's for each service, which might add another interesting dimension.
Great article and lots of good valuable information for all marketers out there. Its good to see some studies which are sophisticated and take into detail as this one. I think it is correct that the SEO part is the most selling one because people don´t want to overspend on adwords as it happens a lot out there. I´ve seen many companies which say no PPC anymore because we got burned before and now rely on SEO for unrelevant keywords which they rank high for which are useless but the only see the ranking numbers and wonder why there are no more sales.
Sebastian, really appreciate your feedback! I think a lack of understanding is a common issue in the search marketing industry, prompting people say "no" to the relevant channels just because they don't understand how it works.
But I'm confident that we are able to communicate with customers using language they can understand.
Superb article Alexandra! Really well analysed. This would be great help for us in targeting new customers! Thanks
Wonderful, This is the coolest and brief explanation that i could find for digital marketing future. Thanks for sharing this very fruitful information.
Good post ..Very informative.keep updating postes like this :)
Thanks for sharing very informative article hope will get more informative articles.
Thanks Alexandra, it was a fascinating read. Never would have thought content marketing search queries are nearly as high as social media marketing.
Great article and lots of good valuable information for all marketers out there. Its good to see some studies which are sophisticated and take into detail as this one.
Content marketing must be the king.
It is a great post with much useful information, many thanks mate
From experience I've always found that SEO sells the best with a good pitch. PPC converts well for people who are already using it but are getting crappy results - but to date I have only been able to convince a few clients to come on board entirely to PPC.
Social Media - There is an even split - But a lot of clients have trouble justifiying ROI. I'm not really a social guy through, so I don't help with the conversions here.
And Content Marketing - I haven't actually pitched this yet as a lot of my clients are in eCommerce - So they are looking for a direct ROI rather than long term growth.
Matt, SEO is a long-term investment, which I think creates issues at times. People often aren't willing to be patience, so I don't recommend, for instance, that startups only rely on SEO. Referral traffic and brand mentions are easier and more effective ways of reaching potential clients. However, with PPC an exceedingly trustworthy agency or expert is needed, because a client's fears are greater.
I feel Social Media and Content Marketing is practically inseparable from SEO. They're just additional sources of organic traffic and, especially for SMM, the conversions are really related to the strength of the brand. The more powerful the brand, the more likely visitors from SMM channels will become customers.
Hi, Alexandra! Big thanks for identifying the best method of Digital marketing! We also know only one way to get target customer is that SEO from last decade! But now social media marketing is another good way of getting more traffic and domain authority! My simple question is that when Google becomes a Social Media channel instead of search engine? Like all big social networks like Facebook & twitter convert to a little search engines from last 3 to 4 years!
Ushman, I don't believe Google will become a Social Media channel. In reality we spend much more time on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram compared to searching Google.
Hi, Alexandra!!
I think the ideal is to make a fair combination of these 4 niches (SEO, PPC, Content Marketing and SMM) and depending on the type of client we are looking for.
We must never obviate any activity because all these activities help us to know who our customer
Congrats for the post!!
Carlos, huge thanks! And you're totally right :)
I find it curious that search terms like "content management system database” and “Drupal content management system” are associated with content marketing.
It seems very obvious to me that these searchers intend to find information about a content management system, in the sense of "a set of tools that help me build a website", not "a set of tools that help me manage the content marketing for my organization".
As far as I am concerned, these two concepts have very little in common, and I would wager that the audiences searching for those terms are very different as well.
I would expect a search term like "inbound marketing" or even "hubspot" to be much more related to content marketing, in the sense of this article.
Hats of you Alexandra for doing this marvelous research for four mail pillar of Digital Marketing like SEO, PPC, SMM and Content Marketing. I think whoever want quick result for their brand, product or services then they always preferred for PPC. In SEO, you can get result slowly, not quickly but as a client point of view who aware with SEO then they use SEO services instead of PPC. Now in days, most of the company provides SMM and content marketing services with SEO. So, client should choose either SEO or PPC.
Vishal, thanks for your positive feedback about my research; it's greatly appreciated. I'm confident that a successful digital marketing strategy should consist of both short- and long-term wins in order to satisfy business needs. Ideally both PPC and SEO should be involved!
Thanks Alexandra for such a useful blog post.. I agree with you. Clients want urgent result..But they are not ready to pay for it...Still people are unaware about SEO. Most people give importance to Social medias.
Alexandra, this article must be readied by every Digital marketing people, Great effort
Thanks, Alexandra, very interesting read. That thing about Google advertising on "SEO strategy template" is crazy, another example of their "do as I say, not as I do" policy.
Igor, many thanks for your kind words.Yes, it's funny how Google doesn't care about it's own rules. This proves that the rules of the game aren't the same for everyone, and that's probably why there are a lot of people who become frustrated and choose to use gray and black SEO techniques.
I agree that SEO is the easiest to sell because most business owners are aware of the term, while PPC is simple to explain i just find that alot of bussiness owners still are confused about the subject and often dont realise they need to pay for your services aswel as a budget for ppc.
Ricky, yes I confirm that I hear the same from other experts in our industry!
Hey Alexandra! This is so true - I've found this throughout my career and it is still the case. People know what PPC is, they can easily see the results quickly and they just get it. It's always more of an uphill battle when you have to educate customers on what you are selling to them. But one that is worth it :)
Katy, while I think SEO requires greater understanding, it's part of our job to educate our customers.
very good article , thanks for sharing
Alexandra - superb article very informative, great research.
Thanks, John! Appreciate this, analytical pieces are really close to my heart :)
Very Informative post Alexandra ! Your research is amazing. The way you explain comparing the higher search volume keywords vs higher converting niches keywords are great. The one thing which amazed me was keyword "SEO strategy template" has a CPC of $120.28 and it is used by Google to promote AdWords.
Awesome Alexandra, good to see your blog but i also disagree with SEO is the most selling service.
I feel SEO has more advantage by maintaining a nice content in website. I can't agree SEO is the most selling service.
Nice blog Alexandra ! the story line of comparison is very good...
Really SEO, PPC, Content Marketing, or SMM every one have unique way of attraction to both traffic and earnings !
I feel SEO has more advantage by maintaining a nice content in website then compared with PPC...
Thanks for your comment. Each of those services has pluses and minuses. The one you select will depend on your final goals. So, I can't say that SEO is winning against PPC: they're both help make progress generating revenue, but they do in so different ways.
Hi Alexandra,
Thanks for you sharing suhc a great and in depth analysis of all four major sector of digital marketer world. I totally agree with your point that SEO is and will remain the most desire service.
Hi Alexandra,
Awesome article, loved reading it!
Just wanted to add that I did a search in the Ad Preview and Diagnosis tool using the United States for "SEO strategy template" and no ads came up, did Google remove it? I find that very interesting.
John-Paul, honestly, I relied on the SEMrush data, which is quite reliable in my opinion; so they probably discontinued that. However, this screenshot tells a more solid story about how Google is using AdWords (i.e., broad searches, irrelevant landings, etc.)
Great post! So informative and helpful - thank you :)
Thanks, Alice! Greatly appreciated ;)
Hi Alexandra
that great post but in my adwords tool (also in semrush ) "what is an seo strategy" is the highest cpc keyword compare to "seo strategy template" !!
Rachel, what tool do you use? I've just checked Google Keyword Planner and it seems that you're right, but I noticed that it's changing constantly. Since this data sample was collected in January, it's likely it's already updated.
Now that SEM is almost gone (just 4 out of 10, no... I don't count on the last 3 ads at the end) SEO is the most powerful gun for the customers so I guess I would say SEO services the best! Customers need to know and learn how SEO works so they don't get wrong about what to expect from us.
SMM in my opinion is a complement for SEO. It will help a lot if you do it correctly creating posts with shorter links to our website. They come toghether.
Thanks for sharing the post!!
Moroncito, yes I agree. SMM is another channel of organic traffic and the way to get visitors on board in order to rank better.
Actually, I've found that there's a lot of businesses that are starting with acquiring solely Social Media traffic and then slowly pushing their SEO. I think it's a good strategy right now.
Something new discussed in the post, thanks for this Alexandra!
Only after seeing the title of the post one thought that comes in mind was content marketing sell best but after reading the whole post my mind concluded something else. I think that every marketing technique sell its best but it only depends on the niche for which we are targeting our marketing techniques. As usual content is king but I feels SEO suited best for any knid of product/service.
Nice article Alexandra, Before a couple of days this question crossed my mind and I landed up here. Search query distribution of general and agency-related keywords graph is very informative.
Regards,
Vikas Singh
Vikas, great to hear that!
Many thanks!
One of the evergreen arguments in paid search is whether to advertise for brand terms if the brand ranks #1 for its brand name. There's no absolute right answer to this question, but it's a good example where SEO and paid search can help each other effectively and increase conversion rate for branded search terms.
For example: the ad sitelinks can take visitors to the landing page they are most interested in, instead of the brand homepage. Also, having the 1st ad position and 1st organic position above the fold gives a lot of real estate on the SERP.
Gyorgy, I would certainly encourage brands to run ads on their brands just because it's part of their brand awareness and on top of that, it's cheap.
Sitelinks and other elements of ads look great. If you see non-optimized organic snippets on SERP that aren't really relevant to your search query then it's not surprising that paid search will be working awesomely!
Before reading this article my initial though was that people want to hire out for PPC and SEO, but try social media in-house because it's easier to post to Facebook than manage a $10k+ monthly AdWords spend or properly optimize a web page. However, you bring up a valid point that people do try to do SEO in-house before realizing they are better off hiring a pro. I found the buying cycle with my SEO clients often includes a period of trial and error.
Benjamin, I've never thought about it from the perspective of trial and error. But I have noticed that there are plenty of companies that are trying to do PR campaigns on their own and then converted to being my clients, so I think it can be scalable for a lot of "free" channels.
Hello,
This is a very good topic, and I believe SEO still the most popular topic in digital marketing , I am still new on this business but what I am heard from all experienced people is to care about SEO, and I believe this is right to some extent, if you need to use SEO you should promote a product that customer search for it not the opposite , but if the product is unique and too storong we can use the social media to offer it to the customer and not wait for them to search for it
Hi Alexandra,
Great post! I am already thinking to add "agency" related keywords on our website - https://www.indian-seo-compamy.com. Also, PPC related keywords, that you suggested are great. We will work on it.
Thank you for your help. I like to request you to write such article on SMM.
Deb
Excellent post and very informative. I have often been curious about this topic myself, since I frequently offer SEM services to clients. Thank you.
Many thanks Alexandra Tachalova for the first time I have got a post which is really matter to SEO industry, and this is the most important point for Indian Digital Marketing Industry. Thanks a Lot again!
Interesting article, every day I learn more new things in this blog, I hope to follow your concerns and take into account all the knowledge put into this article, thank you very much
Nice insights Alexandra!!! But I can't agree SEO is the most selling service. Because every company now a days want faster results. So SEO can't be considered for faster results. Many clients of I suggested for PPC and they just doubled and tripled investment in PPC and happy with the results. Again I feel if you do aggressive PPC then it greatly affects SEO by improving your organic keywords rankings. It's surprise to see Email Marketing is not in the list which is having lots of potential in compare to other services. Thanks for sharing.
Kula, I agree that quick wins can be achieved only with PPC. On the other hand, with SEO you need to pay only an agency -- that's it. This is why SEO is so popular.
I don't agree that PPC helps website rankings to grow. It might help, but not directly.
PPC will not help with SEO , However it has been noted that for a website ranking in the first page the number of clicks obtained will be more when PPC and SEO are used together than the clicks obtained through PPC alone ( if the website was not present in organic results) and SEO alone (no PPC) In fact there was an article on the moz blog itself regarding this : 8 Ways PPC and SEO Are Better When Used Together
Very informative article. Lots of research must have gone into writing this.
Joseph, I agree PPC and SEO ideally should be used simultaneously. This will produce a higher likelihood of conversion as well as making the site more visible forthe searchers that you're not ranking in organic results.
Im agree with Mis Alexandra, maybe PPC will give some benefits of website ranks, but not that much. Im my country (Indonesia) many people avoid to click anything have connection with PPC, so i must agree that SEO is the most best wat to improve Website ranks
Regards
Mugianto
Yeah, I agree with you Alexandra!
May be PPC can improve our sales or visitors once in the blue moon, but it can't improve our ranking for long time.