Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising are the two leading strategies for attracting highly targeted traffic to your website. While industry experts argue that SEO earns more ROI than PPC, it does not mean that PPC is not useful or preferable. After all, the golden rule of marketing says - if your marketing campaign is making a profit, it's worth it.

So when is a PPC campaign preferred over an SEO campaign?

For starters, Pay per click marketing is the best way to get good rankings on a search engine for a new site. A new site would have little or no visibility, and therefore it will take a long time to achieve organic listing results. Typically, SEO results start showing up only after 90 days. Paid search listings start showing in as less as 15 minutes. PPC therefore is the quickest way to generate traffic.

Moreover, Search engine optimization is a rigid process. You select keywords, optimize your website for those keywords and see results in a few days. Suppose you are running a holiday promotion or an end-of-season sale. In such a case, using optimization for natural rankings will be very difficult due to the large turnaround time of SEO. Also, after the sale/promotion is over, those keywords are of no importance to you. Paid searches give you this flexibility. Not just this, with paid searches, you can even target certain geographical locations & choose particular times of the day for your ad to be shown!

If your business is in a highly competitive domain, it will take a lot of time and effort for you to achieve top rankings in an organic search listing. Instead, if you use paid searches, you can easily rank high by just altering your bids.

Organic search results are calculated by complex algorithms which keep changing all the time. Paid searches are independent of these algorithms and hence you don't have to worry about your rankings getting affected any time an algorithm change is introduced.

Paid searches help you list for a huge number of keywords which is not possible through SEO. Consider a case wherein you are launching a new product - say, a new antivirus software. Now, the target market you want to capture is customers looking for an antivirus software, as well as customers searching for a specific antivirus software. You would want to illustrate the advantages of your software over the competitor and try to convert him/her to buy yours. In such a scenario, it is not possible to have your competitors' names as your keywords in an SEO campaign whereas in a PPC campaign, you can use these keywords easily. You may then write a compelling ad copy, and grab the customer's attention to click and check out your product.

Another distinct advantage of using PPC ads is the option of using the content network. This means that your ad not only shows up for search result listings, but also shows up in the search engine's partner sites. E.g. Suppose you deal in digital cameras. Now imagine the kind of traffic you would get if your ad shows up on a digital camera review site. The content network gives you more avenues to attract extremely targeted prospects to your website.

Paid search rankings are totally in your control - Depending upon your budget and maximum bid for a particular keyword, your ad will show at a particular rank.

The flip side here is that you may end up burning a lot of cash if you do not have a strategy in place. PPC goes beyond simply adding keywords and writing ads. It is a very powerful marketing tool if utilized intelligently. With creative execution and strategic tracking, you can ensure a positive return on your PPC advertising investment.