The difference between SEO and paid ads...visualised

Let me be clear, smart people buy ads.

If you're a business, buying ads makes sense.

Firstly it allows you to be seen by more people.

It generates leads and of course, it shows that you have the money to buy ads.

But anyone who has ever run an ad knows that it's not easy because with an ad there are a few ways people act.

People ignore.

People don't click.

People do click.

People click but don't take action.

People click and take action.

And depending on the platform and how you purchased the ad, each one of those actions could cost you money.

And so, ad buying is a skill, ad creation is a skill and ad management is a skill.

Get a good ad that converts and you can scale to infinity, placing the ad all over the world.

I have a friend who did this, he started with £400 and made £1 million online, simply by using a great ad and scaling it.

But these stories are rare because people rarely take action the first or indeed the 20th time they see an ad.

And so, with ads to reduce the risk of loss, start small, test and only scale when you have one that wins.

This of course is the myth of PPC and direct advertising

That it's a switch you turn on and like magic, the leads come in.

In reality, it takes time to get right, improve, test and find the right creative to generate an ad that hits

home.

This is why the best PPC people charge a lot of money.

So what about SEO?

Firstly SEO is not direct advertising, it's brand marketing

This is the critical mistake people make.

But unlike paid ads where you never own the platform.

With SEO, your website is the platform.

And SEO builds your digital home brick by brick.

When we compare this with ads. You judge paid direct advertising on its RO1

We spent x and we got y.

With SEO, you judge it differently.

Sure, you look at traffic, rankings, time on site and even conversions.

It makes sense to keep an eye on those.

But your aim is to build a website that matters to the people you seek to serve.

Because people are individuals with context-sensitive needs that vary from person to person.

This means your site has to be a lot of different thing to a lot of different people at different times.

It has to be an educator, an inspirer, a reassurer, an impressor, a salesperson, a customer service adviso and a helper.

SEO is digital business building.

And once the paid ads stop, they vanish.

This is the difference between SEO and paid advertising.

One builds you an asset for your business.

One rents assets from another business.

Smart businesses do both.

Because smart businesses also know that organic supports paid and paid supports organic.

But SEO builds attention assets.

Paid ads rent attention assets

Both have their place and neither should be ignored.

But don't waste all of your budget renting.

Make sure you find the budget to build as well.