As an Affiliate my preferred method of delivering traffic to my merchant partners is by search engine optimisation (SEO) however I am the first to admit that SEO is an area in which I’m not particularly adept so unfortunately in order to scrape a living I’m forced to rely heavily on pay per click (PPC).

I would estimate that my annual turnover from Affiliate Marketing is generated 20% from SEO and 80% from PPC it is my aim in 2007 to attempt to bring the figures a lot closer together ultimately a complete reversal would be ideal.

As a starting point for my shift of focus let us take a look at the positive and negative aspects of SEO and PPC.

SEO Positives

• SEO does not necessarily involve a financial investment, other than the cost of the time concerned in the optimisation procedure.
• SEO is a cost efficient marketing method.
• SEO can be done either in-house or it can be contacted out to a specialist company.
• High search engine rankings can have a positive effect on branding.

SEO Negatives

• It may take a long time to gain good positions on the major search engines, weeks, months or even years.
• A lot of effort may be invested into search engine optimisation for very little return.
• If a good position in serps is achieved maintaining that position may prove difficult due to the competition from other websites.
• Changes in search engine algorithms can wipe out good SEO position in an instant.

PPC Positives

• Speed of execution. PPC enables advertising campaigns to be implemented very quickly. It often takes only a few minutes until the advertisements are live.
• Campaign results can be seen very quickly and adjustments made instantly.
• Finding the right niche keywords can be very lucrative.
• PPC can be out sourced to a pay per click specialist.

PPC Negatives

• Every click adds to the cost of sales.
• Quality score rules for landing pages are making it more difficult, or expensive to gain a good position on PPC.
• Click fraud, while the PPC search engines constantly battle against this there can be no denying that it does happen.
• The competition for the top PPC ad slots in many instances is as rife as that for similar positions in organic search.

Hmmm that’s enough pros and cons to be going on with and it looks like i’m going to have my work cut out over the coming months, if you have anything to add or a bit of SEO advice please get in touch.

SEO and PPC Positives and Negatives