When thinking of traditional digital marketing strategies, many will jump to SEO as the foremost way that a business can get customers through the internet. While it may be true that SEO generates high volumes of traffic, which can equate to extremely cheap conversions; there are also a number of factors whereby SEO can sometimes actually not be the ideal strategy for everybody. For a start, SEO can be an extremely lengthy and time-consuming endeavor with some industries not seeing movement for up to 6 months in competitive keyword niches. Not all businesses have the luxury of waiting that long. Furthermore, SEO can be an extremely technical and complicated endeavor requiring far more resources and man-hours to perform correctly - which a lot of business owners may not be able to provide.

Google AdWords works on the principle that many business owners don't mind paying a premium to have adverts in places where they are the most likely to convert. Using this they have come up with a system where businesses can directly choose which keywords, they would like to place advertisements for their products and services above the organic rankings. Which will in turn generate clicks and traffic through to your website, which Google will charge you for on, often, a per-click basis.

This is known as PPC (or Pay Per Click) advertising and while it may sound expensive compared to clicks and traffic generated by SEO, which are “free” once you have attained the rankings, it can be a better way of doing business for many. Immediacy is something that many people do not mind paying for. After all, why wait 6 months for your website to crawl its way up the organic rankings when you can have an immediate and measurable business on some of your high ticket, high ROI products? Well, Google is trying to provide a way for businesses to get both with businesses rushing to exploit this newfound stream of interest.

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AdWords is largely for businesses whose core focus is in the short term. With Google AdWords, if it is set up properly and targeting the correct keywords with high-quality ads, you can immediately start seeing clicks and conversions as soon as you launch it. Also, Google AdWords helps you plan what keywords you may want to target by providing its helpful Keyword Planner tool, which if used properly can do a lot of the hard work for you. However, something this easy comes at a premium and you can find that in particularly competitive industries, CPC (or Cost Per Click) can be extremely high for what is essentially just a click, and even after you have paid for it there is no absolute guarantee that that individual will come through as a relevant inquiry.

Ultimately, businesses need to determine where their most pressing concerns lie, whether or not their goals are set in the near future, and whether they are willing to pay the cost for immediacy. Having said all of that most businesses will want some degree of both and there’s nothing stopping people from investing in both high quality and long-term SEO strategy and a sharp and focused PPC campaign to get the ball rolling!

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People often ask this question. Like many things in life, yes, you could do it yourself. In fact, Google makes it extremely easy for those who are not as tech-savvy to get a campaign up and running in no time. However, in Google's opinion, the onus is on you to ensure your campaign is properly set up and maintained in order to get you relevant and actionable clicks. Keeping this in mind, it is sometimes easy to forget that every click on your advert that does not turn into a sale or relevant inquiry for your business will cost you money and affect your margins to some degree.

This is why it is arguably a wiser decision to pay to have your account managed by a reputable and professional team of digital marketers than potentially hemorrhage money from your campaign from the outset without getting any sales. Ultimately, if you are not particularly tech-savvy or have the luxury of time to dedicate to studying and educating yourself on how to build a successful AdWords campaign, then it may be better to seek professional help in setting up and maintaining your campaign.

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