Most marketing teams, particularly those with limited budgets, usually end up asking ‘Should we invest more into SEO or push harder on PPC?’ at some point. But I don’t think it’s asking the right question. What you’re really asking is how quickly do you want to see results compared to how much you have to
Most marketing teams, particularly those with limited budgets, usually end up asking ‘Should we invest more into SEO or push harder on PPC?’ at some point.
But I don’t think it’s asking the right question. What you’re really asking is how quickly do you want to see results compared to how much you have to invest.
SEO builds durable, compounding visibility. PPC buys immediate attention. But the most value comes when you use both channels together.
This guide breaks down how each channel works, when to rely on them, where they fall short and how to combine them into a coherent search strategy.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) increases long-term visibility by making your website easier for Google to understand, trust and rank.
It shapes your website so search engines can crawl it, interpret it and decide whether it deserves to appear for relevant queries. Google outlines the fundamentals in its
SEO Starter Guide.
There are a number of stages your website goes through before it can be ranked:
As we’ve said, one of the biggest benefits of SEO is that the results compound over time.
Once you gain rankings, you’ll retain them over time without paying for them (although you’ll likely need to keep maintaining those pages).
SEO compounds because:
SEO matters from a conversion perspective because organic results are generally more trusted than paid positions.
A 2025 FirstPageSage CTR study found the top three organic results capture 68.7% of clicks. High visibility translates to sustained, low-cost traffic.
This has been impacted somewhat in the last few years with the rise of AI overviews, which have taken many clicks away for middle and top of funnel content, but those top organic positions remain important.
Imagine a home-improvement firm looking to raise its profile across a broader range of topics.
It could write content around topics like:
“How Much Does a Loft Conversion Cost in the UK?”
“Planning Permission vs Permitted Development.”
If the company can rank for these types of enquiries they can raise their profile for more queries, and get more potential customers to their website, without paying per click.
Pay Per Click (PPC) provides immediate visibility through an auction that evaluates your bid, relevance and landing page experience.
With PPC your ads can appear at the top of search within minutes for near instant visibility. But it’s not as simple as “highest bidder wins”.
Effective PPC campaigns start with keywords that balance intent, competition and cost.
Because you pay for the clicks you get, PPC isn’t often used for top of funnel clicks. Instead it focuses on commercially relevant terms:
Every search triggers a live auction. You set a maximum bid, but relevance often trumps the highest bid.
High Quality Scores reduce costs and improve your placement without spending the most.
To work out your Quality Score Google assesses:
Ad Rank = Bid × Quality Score
This formula determines whether your ad appears at all, and at what position.
Because you only pay when someone clicks your ad, it means PPC can be used to learn faster on what types of messages and keywords deliver commercial results.
With PPC you’re constantly testing elements of your campaigns to refine results and deliver more conversions for less money.
PPC teams spend a lot of their time working and testing elements like bids, match types, keyword lists, negative keywords, ad copy and landing pages.
Imagine a SaaS business starting a campaign for its project management software.
They could quickly launch a PPC campaign targeting an exact match search for “project management software UK.”
And because they appear at the top of search instantly, they can immediately start to see and analyse:
It would take much longer (potentially months) before you could get this kind of information by using SEO.
SEO is slower but compounds. PPC is fast but costly in the long term. They achieve the same thing (online sales and enquiries) but work on different timeframes, cost models and user behaviours.
SEO requires upfront investment but has declining marginal cost.
PPC has linear cost per click and costs can increase over time.
SEO can be slow to build but delivers persistent returns.
PPC delivers instant traffic but also an instant stop in visibility when spending pauses.
Although PPC builds awareness quicker, searchers are still more trusting of organic search results vs advertising. One study found organic search converts at 2.8% vs 0.8% for PPC on average.
So while SEO can take longer to build, the results can be better over the long-term.
SEO is more effective as a long-term channel when buyers do a lot of research before making a purchase.
SEO tends to work better when:
B2B services, finance, healthcare and legal sectors depend on credibility so you’ll need to invest in more educational and trust building content rather than just advertising spend.
In 2024 the average cost-per-click (CPC) rose by around 10% and these costs are rising consistently year-on-year (so PPC is delivering the same results but at higher cost).
Buyers early in the market are looking for educational comparison style content as they research their options. This type of content doesn’t work for PPC because it’s so early in the buyer journey. But SEO benefits greatly.
SEO creates a steady, compounding traffic stream.
Take a professional services firm trying to attract more customers online. They’ll need to publish expert-led explainer content, thought leadership and comparison guides to build trust and awareness.
By publishing this content you can attract buyers earlier in the buyer journey so when they come to make a purchase they already know about you, and you’re not as reliant on PPC to appear only at the end of the buying cycle.
PPC works when you need speed, precision and guaranteed SERP presence.
PPC is ideal when:
You haven’t got time to wait for SEO to build your organic visibility because you need results and customers quickly. PPC can generate immediate visibility and awareness
PPC is ideal for promotional offers around Black Friday, tax year-end, event registrations or seasonal events like Christmas, because you can pay for instant visibility for a limited time, and then stop paying once the event is over.
If you haven’t got time to grow your organic presence and need to start generating leads and enquiries straight away, PPC is a much better option than SEO.
Searches like “emergency plumber near me”, “SEO agency”, or “specialist property accountants”, need immediate visibility to capture high intent searches. You can’t always wait for SEO to get you there.
If you take an event venue trying to appear for searches around wedding venues to secure summer bookings. It could target a keyword like “wedding venue Manchester” and wait for organic visibility to kick in.
But this could take a long time, and every day they’re not visible they’re potentially missing out on leads. Instead, they should opt for PPC (at least to start with) to start getting enquiries straight away.
| Scenario | Choose PPC If… | Choose SEO If… | Use Both If… |
| Speed of results needed | You need leads immediately | You can wait for results to build over time | You need predictable short-term results and long-term efficiency |
| Product / service launch | You’re launching something new and need instant visibility | You’re building long-term positioning for a known service | You want fast traction and lasting visibility |
| Current organic visibility | Your organic footprint is weak or non-existent | You already rank for some relevant terms and can build on it | You want to dominate the SERP with both paid and organic results |
| Competitive landscape | Competitors dominate the SERP with ads | You can realistically compete for organic rankings | You want both ads and organic listings to appear together for trust + share of click |
| Acquisition costs | You need pipeline even at higher cost per click | You want lower long-term CAC | You want to balance cost-effective SEO growth with targeted PPC |
| Buying journey | You want to capture bottom-funnel, high-intent searches | You’re in a research-heavy industry where education drives decisions | You want early influence (SEO) + late capture (PPC) |
| Market conditions | CPCs are affordable or predictable | CPCs are rising and squeezing margins | You want PPC efficiency while SEO reduces paid reliance over time |
| Marketing objectives | Rapid message testing and validation | Long-term authority building | Fast testing with PPC while SEO compounds |
SEO and PPC have weaknesses. Understanding them stops you putting investment in the wrong channel.
Ranking improvements can take months due to crawl cycles and competition.
Google periodically updates its algorithm. These updates can disrupt traffic for sites with weak technical setups or thin content, meaning any ground you’d made up before the algorithm could quickly disappear.
With AI overviews providing more answers directly in SERPS, a SparkToro Zero-Click Study found only around 38% of EU searches now lead to a website click. Read more about the impact of zero click searches.
Any technical issues like slow pages, poor mobile experiences and crawl issues restrict growth.
Like PPC, SEO is an ongoing tactic. You’re not making improvements in isolation, your competitors are also improving so you need to keep up as well as dealing with algorithm changes and changes to buying intent.
As we’ve said, CPCs rise year-on-year, meaning you’re potentially always paying more without necessarily seeing better results.
As soon as you stop paying for PPC budgets, you stop being visible unless you’ve also got organic visibility in the SERP.
For PPC to work you need to be clear on who you’re targeting and which match types you target. Broad match terms and poor negative keyword lists can drain budgets quickly.
If people see the same ad they can start to unconsciously ignore it meaning your CTR declines. So you need to always be working on new ad creative to stay relevant.
A poor landing page experience (slow page speed, poor UX and not matching search expectations) can weaken quality scores and reduce conversions.
If you treat SEO and PPC as one strategy you can share keyword, intent and conversion insights, reduce waste and improve performance in the short and long-term.
Ads can immediately show which terms drive revenue. You can then use this information to assess SEO content priorities.
SEO principles like UX and keyword intent can help align your ads and landing pages, lifting PPC quality scores and reducing CPCs.
You can use SEO data in Search Console to help refine negative keyword lists for PPC to reduce appearing in irrelevant searches.
High-performing PPC headlines often inspire stronger SEO title tags.
Appearing in both organic and paid results maximises click-share.
Think of the benefits you’d get from using PPC keyword data to improve SEO performance. By tracking which PPC terms are converting, you can then create SEO pages around those terms to appear in organic search, meaning you wouldn’t have to spend as much on PPC.
Or you could continue to pay for PPC alongside your organic visibility and appear high in more positions at the top of search.
You can see how this works for one of our clients, The Storage Team, who we handle both SEO and PPC campaigns for. By focusing on both channels as a combined strategy, we’ve been able to position The Storage Team at the top of search in multiple positions, giving them more visibility and a higher chance of getting a click and conversion, whether it’s from organic or paid.
Here’s an example of where they appear:
High in the sponsored positions:
In the Local Map positions:
And high in the organic search position:
Your starting point with SEO vs PPC depends on urgency, competitiveness and existing visibility.
If you need immediate leads, are launching something new, have poor organic visibility or have competitors appearing high in SERPS then you should consider starting with PPC.
If you want to reduce customer acquisition costs long-term, you’re in a high trust category, PPC has high CPCs and you can afford to wait for visibility to kick in, then SEO is the best way to go.
High performing SEO and PPC campaigns work together, sharing data and goals.
This is something we achieved on our client, OneWelbeck, when we used data between campaigns to increase non-branded traffic more than 80% and increase key events by nearly 3% in 12 months.
Treat SEO and PPC as complementary components of one search strategy, not competing channels.
SEO builds trust and reduces long-term acquisition costs.
PPC provides speed, precision and insight.
Together, they deliver stronger visibility, better targeting and more efficient growth.
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