In the world of digital marketing, two of the most effective strategies for increasing website visibility and driving traffic are Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising. While both aim to attract visitors from search engines like Google and Bing, SEO vs. PPC operate in very different ways.

Understanding the strengths and limitations of SEO and PPC is crucial to making informed decisions for your marketing strategy. Here’s a breakdown of the pros and cons of SEO vs. PPC and tips on when to use one, the other, or both together.

What is SEO?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) involves optimizing your website to rank higher in organic (non-paid) search engine results. This includes:

• On-page optimization (keywords, content structure)
• Technical SEO (site speed, mobile-friendliness, indexing)
• Off-page SEO (backlinks and authority building)

Pros of SEO

• Cost-Effective Long-Term: Once your site ranks, traffic is essentially free.
• Credibility and Trust: Organic results are often viewed as more trustworthy than paid ads.
• Sustainable Growth: SEO builds long-term brand authority and visibility.
• Higher Click-Through Rates (CTR): Users tend to click organic listings more than ads.

Cons of SEO

• Slow Results: It can take months to see significant improvements.
• Algorithm Changes: Rankings can be affected by updates from Google.
• Ongoing Maintenance: Requires consistent content and technical upkeep.
• High Competition: Competing for top rankings in saturated industries is tough.

What is PPC?

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) is a paid advertising model where you bid on keywords and pay every time someone clicks on your ad. Popular platforms include Google Ads and Bing Ads. PPC advertising delivers very qualified leads and is often used while trying to improve rankings through SEO.

Pros of PPC

• Immediate Visibility: Get to the top of search results right away.
• Targeted Advertising: Reach specific audiences based on demographics, location, and behavior.
• Scalable Campaigns: Easily adjust budgets and targeting based on performance.
• Performance Data: Clear metrics for clicks, conversions, and ROI.

Cons of PPC

• Ongoing Costs: You pay for every click—costs can add up quickly.
• Limited Lifespan: Traffic stops when you stop paying.
• Ad Fatigue: Users may become blind to ads over time.
• Lower Trust: Some users skip over paid results.

When to Use SEO

Choose SEO when you:

• Want sustainable, long-term growth.
• Have a limited advertising budget.
• Aim to build brand authority and trust.
• Can commit to ongoing content creation and optimization.

SEO is ideal for content-rich sites, such as blogs, educational resources, and local service providers looking for steady visibility.

When to Use PPC

Opt for PPC when you:

• Need immediate traffic or leads.
• Are launching a new product or service.
• Want to target specific keywords with high commercial intent.
• Have a time-sensitive promotion or seasonal campaign.

PPC is a smart choice for eCommerce, product launches, or businesses entering new markets.

When to Use SEO and PPC Together

Combining SEO and PPC often yields the best results. Consider using both strategies when you:

• Want maximum search engine visibility (dominate both paid and organic results).
• Are testing keyword performance before committing to long-term SEO.
• Have different goals across the funnel—PPC for conversions, SEO for awareness.
• Want to use PPC to drive traffic while improving organic rankings with SEO.

This dual approach is especially powerful for competitive industries where organic ranking alone may not be enough.

SEO vs. PPC

Both SEO and PPC play vital roles in a successful digital marketing strategy. While SEO builds long-term value and authority, PPC offers quick wins and precise targeting. The key is to align each method with your business goals, budget, and timeline.

Still unsure whether to invest in SEO, PPC, or both? Get a free digital marketing audit or consultation from Webtivity Marketing & Design to help you develop a strategy that delivers the best return on investment.

The post SEO vs. PPC: Pros, Cons, and When to Use Each (or Both) appeared first on Webtivity Marketing & Design.

The struggle is real when it comes to keeping a website up to date with the ever changing SEO rules, and search engine algorithms. An online presence is crucial, and having a digital marketing team that has your values is crucial as well. Hiring an outside digital marketing company means you can worry about the success of your business, while they handle the marketing of your company.

A good digital marketing company will have a variety of marketing packages available for you. They will offer SEO, (search engine optimization), SMM (social media marketing, (PPC) pay per click, as well as other types of marketing that can include blogging, email marketing and more.

These are some things to consider when hiring an online marketing company in the Bradenton and St. Petersburg area of Florida.

Understand the Risks

The cheapest SEO Company won’t get you the results you’re looking for. In fact, they could actually damage your company, and damage your reputation with Google. If Google penalizes you, you could suffer the ramifications for years.

Beware of an SEO Guarantee

NO company can guarantee first page search engine results, they just can’t. So if they do, you need to run away, and fast. Remember the old saying that if it sounds too good to be true, then it is?

Look at Past Clients and Reviews

Client reviews are so important in this day of online word of mouth. Look for a company that has a great online reputation. Satisfied customers, case studies, and client referrals are all indicators of success!

Know Your Goals

It’s important that you know what your business goals are, then they can be conveyed to the marketing team. Be sure that you know who your competitors are, what key words you’re targeting, and who your target audience is. This will make an effective marketing strategy more attainable for your digital marketer.

The bottom line is that you want to feel comfortable with the company you choose. Be sure you’re able to ask questions and get answers. SEO is a long term commitment, it isn’t something that happens overnight. If you are in search of a reputable digital marketing agency in the Bradenton and St. Petersburg area, get in touch with us today to see how we can help.

The post Know the Risks before Hiring a Digital Marketing Company appeared first on Webtivity Marketing & Design.

Introducing the Webtivity Referral Rewards Program!

Up to $350 credit for your website and digital marketing referrals

We love our clients and thank them for trusting us with their digital marketing needs. There is no greater compliment than when our valued clients refer us to their business friends. These website and digital marketing referrals have been crucial to Webtivity’s success over the years.

To show our appreciation, we have established a referral reward program. When a client refers someone to us and they hire us for their website design and/or digital marketing, the client will receive a credit and the referral will get a discount. So it’s a Win-Win-Win. The client gets a credit. Referral gets a discount. Webtivity gets a new client.

The great thing about the referral reward program is there is no limit to the number of referrals or credits. If you are currently only a website client, you can refer yourself for digital marketing and get both the credit and the discount.

If you are a previous client, no problem. Refer yourself and come back to Webtivity. We don’t hold a grudge. You will receive both the referring credit and referral discount. After that refer others to earn even more credits.

Click here to learn more about our website and digital marketing referral program and refer someone today

We have tried to make it as easy as possible. On the page above you will find an email template as well as a contact form to get in touch with us.

Please note this referral reward program is effective April 8, 2020. While we appreciate past referrals, we unfortunately cannot make this program retroactive.

The post Referral Reward Program: Tell a Friend About Webtivity Marketing & Design appeared first on Webtivity Marketing & Design.

It’s 2018 and you, as a business owner, are inundated with offers and tools to grow your business in the digital arena. One of the newcomers on the digital marketing field is a method called geofencing. But just what is geofencing and how can you use it to grow your business? Webtivity Marketing & Design will endeavor to give you a solid grasp on just what geofencing entails and more importantly how to apply geofencing capabilities to grow your business.

What is geofencing?

Geofencing in definition refers to several different technologies whose main goal is creating a virtual perimeter around a specifically defined geographical area. There are several ways to enact a geofence with some methods requiring proprietary physical technology known as beacons to using GPS, Wi-Fi, radio frequency identification (RFID) or even increasingly social media tags. Once you have a geographical area virtually defined or geofenced, you can target users in this area with promotional offers or other types of useful client facing information.

Taking Advantage of Geofencing

The biggest draw to geofencing targeting for most businesses is the ability to lower advertising costs. Simply put your typical entrepreneurial business owner is not looking to compete with national or even statewide retailers. Instead savvy business owners look to reach the potential client that is nearby. This is in part what makes geofencing so cost effective, the ability to reduce competing voices, or ad dollars, to the minimalist of levels.

There is one additional benefit of geofencing targeting however that often goes overlooked. Geofencing can also be used offensively as well as defensively. Defensively it can help reduce the ad noise that most users experience on their various digital access points. As our world becomes overwhelmed with more and more information, it is becoming increasingly easier to target not only nearby potential clients but those close to competitors as well.

Getting started with Geofencing

Let’s get into the nitty gritty of the various methods you can use to take full advantage of geofencing for your own business enterprise. There are several advertisers or providers that use proprietary devices known as beacons to create a virtual geographical area using these devices. Unfortunately this usually involves considerable cost and upkeep to manage and is usually priced out of range for most small to medium sized businesses.

The relatively new method of geofencing uses established advertising platforms that have already done most of the leg work of crating geofences for you. These services such as Google Adwords and Facebook include features that target specific areas around you or your competitor’s business using GPS, Wi-Fi, mobile device location from apps and other methods that are collected by these big players. They then offer these options as part of their possible client targeting matrix.

Webtivity Geofencing Services

Webtivity Marketing and Design has been providing digital marketing services since 1999. From link building, to blogging, to website design and digital advertising, including geofencing targeting we do it all.

Have we mentioned that we are a Certified Google Partner Agency? Give us a call at 941-753-7574 or contact us for more information on how we can work closely with you to help your business achieve all of your geofencing and overall marketing goals!

The post How to Grow Your Business with Geofencing in 2018 appeared first on Webtivity Marketing & Design News.

We hear increasingly from potential clients they don’t want to use Google AdWords because “we did that for a while and all we did was burn through a bunch of money with no return.”  We have had great success leveraging AdWords for our clients so we know it can work–if done properly.  In order to “save money” businesses set up their own campaigns instead of hiring a trustworthy consultant.  While creating a few ads and putting your credit card on file with Google is easy enough for almost anyone to do, setting up your campaign and managing it properly takes years of experience and data analysis know-how.  We find there are four common themes that lead to businesses getting disillusioned with AdWords:

You Can’t Set It and Forget It
Running a successful AdWords campaign does require ongoing management.  Your competitors are constantly changing their bids, consumer demand changes often, Google changes the way AdWords works from time to time, and on top of all that you need to determine which of your ad campaigns aren’t working very well and either make changes to them or pause them altogether.  Most often the biggest mistake we see is businesses set up their account, throw a big budget at the campaign, and then they just let it run and run and run.  That’s a perfect way to get disappointed by AdWords.

Don’t Always Listen to Google
When you log into your AdWords account often you will see messages from Google telling you things like, “There are 83 keywords you should add to your campaign!” and other similar advice.  The common person thinks, “Since Google is telling me to do this I had better listen!”    But our experience often leads us to NOT listen to those automated messages that pop up when we log into an AdWords account.  Remember these are automated messages that are designed to try to be helpful, but you can’t treat them as gospel.

Tracking the Wrong Metrics
Another colossal No-No is to simply track “clicks” as your primary success metric.  It’s easy enough to get clicks–just set a big budget and target a bunch of non-qualified crap and you’ll get tons of clicks!  Will that get you business?  Heck no.  When clients bring their unsuccessful AdWords accounts to us we are almost always able to reduce their monthly ad budget as we optimize and tighten their campaigns.  On top of that we are tracking even more important metrics than simple clicks: how long people stay on the website once they’ve clicked on an ad; and even more importantly, whether they fill out a contact form or purchase a product once they got to your Landing Page.

Find the Right Partner
We have often been shocked and saddened by campaigns we see from other supposedly reputable companies in our industry.  Your AdWords account should be set up in YOUR name with YOUR credit card on the account.  That gives you ownership and non-restricted access to your campaign.  When you’re hiring a company to help with your campaign make sure they are asking questions about your products and services, the types of clients you want to target, the geographic areas you want to target.  They should be talking to you about the importance of remarketing campaigns, the importance of monitoring and improving your campaign Quality Scores, and most importantly they should be talking about how they will measure and track conversions using Google Analytics.  A click is great, but a conversion is what will make the campaign a viable marketing tactic for your business.

The post Disillusion With AdWords appeared first on .

Google recently decided to strip out all keyword data from organic non-paid search traffic. Here is how you can get back some of the that information by linking your Google Webmaster Tools account with a Google AdWords account, even if you’re not actively running AdWords Ads. 

1. First, make sure you already claimed and verified your domain in Webmaster Tools, which you should already be. Under the appropriate domain click the cogwheel in the top right corner and click “users & site owners.” If your email is not listed click the red “ADD A NEW USER” button in the top right and add your email with full permission.

2. In your Google Adwords account, click “My account” in the green navigation bar and then click “Linked accounts.” Under Linked accounts then click “Webmaster Tools” which should then present you with the option “Link new site.” Then add the domain that you have listed in Webmaster Tools, click continue, and then click request access.

3. Once you have requested access you should have a message under “Site Messages” in Webmaster Tools regarding a request from Adwords to import organic search data. In the message find the “Click here to approve or reject their request” and click the link provided, then confirm the approval.

4. Finally, in your Google Adwords account go to Webmaster Tools under Linked accounts and you should see your domain with the following image:

Once you have completed these steps your Google Adwords account has been successfully linked with Google Webmaster Tools, and AdWords will start collecting keyword data from organic impressions, and clicks. To view these reports, Choose the Dimensions Tab in AdWords, and select “Paid & organic”

The post How to link your Google Adwords account with Google Webmaster Tools appeared first on .