SEO promotion or contextual advertising

Ten years ago people would come and say, “We have a problem! We don’t have a website! ” The situation is different now. Customers say, “We have a problem! We have a website! ”. Just create a website and make a profit? It doesn’t work that way. The site is a pet. He needs to be taken care of and looked after.

With the development of online marketing tools, it becomes an extremely difficult task to choose any tool. Especially, this task is difficult for business owners.

Therefore, today we will talk about such traffic sources as contextual advertising and seo promotion. They are considered the backbone of everything that provides you with a clientele. A fascinating instruction awaits you and you decide – “To be or not to be?” and “What is better contextual advertising or SEO?”

Set goals

Everyone knows that tools are chosen based on the task. In order for you to choose the tool that best suits your needs, we recommend a simple practice. You need to ask yourself: “What tasks should the chosen tool solve?”

Tasks are of the following types:

1. Increase in site visits. This is where the classic sales funnel works. Its principle says that the more people get into the “neck”, the more people will pass through it completely and become your clients. Increasing the number of visitors is a good thing, but rarely is the main goal.

2. Receiving orders. If you are not satisfied with how your existing sales channels work, then we recommend that you contact specialists from a full cycle marketing agency and focus on the fact that it is necessary to engage in exactly attracting orders.

3. Reduce costs and increase sales. It often happens that only such clients come from one channel that after all the laborious work the profit from the client is killed by the cost of attracting him. This means that our goal is to reduce the budget while increasing the number of applications.

4. Free promotion. Everybody dreams about it. To take good positions in search engines and not pay a penny – who would not want that ?!

5. Exit to the TOP in search engines. According to statistics, 60% of traffic ends up in the first three lines of search results. Entering this range gives your business a steady stream of customers.

6. Competition. Who doesn’t want to leave a competitor behind? The goal is similar to the previous point, but the difference is that if reaching the top may imply a bypass in the issuance of some informational article, then in a competitive struggle the task is to push the competitor out of the “field of competition”.

We figured out the goals. You can choose any that suits you and your business, or name your own if it is different. Time to answer the question “CEO promotion or contextual advertising?” To answer this question, you need to understand the concepts.

What is SEO

SEO is an abbreviation that stands for – “A set of actions aimed at increasing the frequency of the resource in the search and bringing it to the top of the search results.” All these actions are aimed at ensuring that when analyzing a resource, search engines, checking the resource according to more than 200 criteria, find your site or YouTube channel useful and most closely meeting the user’s requests. This is how SEO works, which stands for (Search Engine Optimization) or search engine optimization.

As already noted, search engines analyze more than 200 criteria and these are not just well-written headlines – everything is much deeper. The basics of SEO work is the optimization of the content of the resource with an eye on the collected base of search queries for your niche.

It is worth noting that in Russian Internet marketing, the abbreviation SEO is often written as CEO. In the Russian professional environment, they will be identical and it will not be a mistake to use these abbreviations to denote the term “search engine optimization”.

But, be careful with Western and European partners. Their CEO is a person. The full title of his position sounds like Chief Executive Officer. If you try to adapt this abbreviation for “our” person, then it will sound more familiar – “Chief Executive Officer”. It is not hard to guess that Elon Musk (CEO of SpaceX and Tesla) has nothing to do with search engine optimization.

What is contextual advertising

For over 20 years, search engines have been collecting information about their users legally. They collect geolocation, history of requests and open pages and other data. What for?

Based on this data, you will be shown advertisements on the pages you visit, and ads are also waiting for you in the top lines of search results.

Why is this type of advertising interesting ?! It can be considered the hottest traffic source on the network. People who google “restaurant at VDNKh” are hungry. This means that there is a high probability of going to your site if you are in the top of the search results thanks to contextual advertising.

It should be noted that such a tool is not cheap. It works on the principle of an auction, which means that an ad will be shown for which a higher bid was offered. In conditions of serious competition, it is necessary to immerse yourself very seriously in working with the context in order not to lose the advertising budget. For busy entrepreneurs, we recommend delegating this task – ordering an advertising campaign in a full cycle marketing agency.

Which is better to use

We have already figured out what are the main tools for website promotion and advertising. Now let’s talk about when it is advisable to use this or that tool, if our goal is to promote our business.

contextual advertising

The easiest way to promote a young business on the Internet is context. It will allow you to make a quick start and attract the first customers as quickly as possible. The specialists’ work on setting up will take 1-2 days. Next, you will only need to replenish your balance and the process will go. Funds will be debited as people visit your site.

Pros of contextual advertising:

• Fast launch (1-2 days). And you can start promoting your product or service.

• You pay according to the CPC model (for a specific targeted action – a click on your ad).

• The freedom to choose keywords and combinations for promotion. The best solution is to use ads that are promoted by medium-low frequency queries. Medium-frequency requests are up to 10,000 per month.

• You can “catch up” people who came to you, but for some reason left the resource. This technique is called retargeting. And if you are interested in the user, but he is simply distracted by something, then he will definitely return to your site.

Cons of contextual advertising:

• If you run out of money in your account, then the flow of customers will stop. The ad will start showing again as soon as you top up your wallet.

• Competitors. In particularly competitive environments, budget clicks are common. A special form of competition. Competitors can deliberately “click” your ads, writing off your funds for nothing.

Back to SEO

The main difference from context here is the lack of quick results. The effect of such a promotion can come in the period from 3 to 4 months. The process of “proving” the authority of your resource to search robots is quite long. You need to generate unique content for your site (photos, videos, texts), place the link mass on other sites (this means that they link to you), optimize the site (download speed, how much time the user spends on the site and much more affects optimization level). But the effect of such events is simply amazing.

Pros of using search engine optimization:

• Large regular investments are not needed. The main expense will be ordering content for the site, or you generally write it yourself. Further content promotion will be carried out by the system without your participation.

• It is a constant source of advertising. It is created once and will work for you in the future constantly and seven days a week.

• Do you know about cases when people sold first places in lines for a new Iphone? So, if the positions of your site in the search results are close to the top ones, then it can be sold very dearly.

Cons of using search engine optimization:

• SEO is a long process. Takes 3-4 months or more.

• Binding to a region. You can get to the top only for a certain region, which you choose yourself. But, this can be circumvented. You just need to create sites for each region.

If, when working with the context, everything is clear – the success of promotion depends on the competent study of the proposal for the target audience and the selection of creatives for their pain, then there are no 100% working methods in SEO. Everything needs to be tested. Therefore, I would like to share a life hack that is used by only a small part of specialists.

This life hack is called “content islands”. What it is? This is any place on the web where you can post your content. Free encyclopedias, Telegram and YouTube channels, web 2.0 media (various platforms for publishing content: Cossa, Pikabu, Ya Zen, likeni.ru and others), review sites, specialized forums, Vkontakte groups, map services and many other interesting sources from the point of view of search engines.

The trick is that absolutely any page can be indexed. Search robots do not distinguish a VK group from a site; it is important for them to comply with algorithms. And it is not known what the system will consider the most suitable for getting into the top of search results. So, the way out is to leave your mark in all corners of the world wide web. There are known cases when clients are consistently brought in by an article that got to the top of search results for the query “reputation management” 7-8 years ago. And people still come after reading it.

The more islands of content you create, the more likely one of them will get to the top of the search results. Although, there is a possibility of reaching the top and several resources at once.

Summarizing

A small summary of the above:

• What is the difference between seo and contextual advertising? The difference between seo and contextual advertising is in terms of implementation. If you launch the context in 1-2 days and get the result immediately, then several months are needed for search engine promotion.

• What to choose? Contextual advertising and SEO are not opponents. They are allies. One instrument plays a long part. He can bring clients and promote the business without outside help and supervision, while another can bring the first customers to the business right now and right here.

• Durability. Customized ads work effectively as long as you control their work and as long as there is money in the account. Search engine optimization always works.