It has been said many times before: Traffic is the backbone of any online activity. The success of any online fitness studio mainly depends on the traffic that it can generate for its pages generates. So where should your website traffic come from, SEO or PPC?
The two most powerful approaches for traffic generation, SEO and PPC, have been the subject of debate for years. Which one is effective: capitalizing on search engine optimization (SEO), which natural search engine marketing tool, or spending more on pay-per-click (PPC)
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Deciding where to capitalize in digital marketing is a problem for most fitness studios. Should your fitness studio use SEO or PPC? To make a decision, you need to explore the pros and cons of SEO and PPC and how they work to grow your fitness studio.
Click here to watch a video on how we set up Pay Per Click For your Fitness Studio
Table of Contents
- Advantages of Organic SEO
- Drawbacks to SEO
- Advantages of PPC
- Drawbacks of PPC / Search Engine Optimization
Search engine optimization is the process of enhancing your web pages’ visibility to gain organic traffic and make them rank. It involves ranking on the natural or organic results on the search engine results page. Organic SEO ensures that your site is ranked higher than your competitors.
The meaning of SEO may vary due to industry trends. However, the bottom line is that SEO ensures that your website clearly explains what your fitness studio is about and provides proper content for visitors. It comprises making sure that the web pages use search engine-friendly content and use clean codes that are helpful to human readers.
Including backlinks from other sites helps enhance your ranking. To acquire quality links, the website should include online videos, social media marketing, and blogging.
Advantages of Organic SEO:
- SEO is affordable in the long run. While PPC gets your website to potential members, you end up paying for every click. On the other hand, after the initial start-up costs of SEO (content and optimization), all visitors that interact with your website id free.
- SEO is long term. Once the website is optimized correctly and ranks on Google, you can be assured of free continuous traffic to your web pages even after you have stopped paying for PPC ads.
- Organic SEO is stable. SEO does not have an off-and-on switch as PPC marketing, whereby when you stop paying for the clicks, the website stops appearing on search results as such efforts to develop natural traffic can sustain a website when your budget dries up.
Drawbacks to SEO:
- SEO takes time to see results. If your website is new, it is unlikely that you will see the results immediately. Good SEO requires work, and it can take months for the results to materialize.
- SEO requires regular maintenance. The job doesn’t end when your website ranks. You will need to optimize your web pages and content so that it maintains the rank. Link building, content updates, and Keyword research are factors that need to be monitored and updated.
- SEO is time-consuming. As compared to PPC that gives instantaneous results, it can take up to three months to see an increase in rank. If you don’t want to hire someone to do SEO, you will have to tackle everything yourself, which means months of work and minimal payoff. Pay-Per-Click Advertising.
Pay-per-click (PPC) marketing is the process of paying for “clicks” to be at the top. PPC allows you complete control of links and messaging on the search results page. If you need immediate clicks on your website, PPC is the best method for giving your website instant results.
Advantages of PPC:
- PPC provides quick results. While it can take months to see the results of an SEO, the results of PPC are swift and straightforward. There is no faster way of getting to your members at prime time than PPC. This is because once your PPC promotion is approved, your ads will be available to millions of people.
- PPC is scalable and controllable. PPC allows you to control the budget. Set your budget and ideal ideas of returns and set the fixed limit. SEO is not scalable, as it may require more money and time if the location is competitive.
- PPC eliminates search engine algorithms. With PPC, you bid for the top ranks rather than the organic nature of the website. On the other hand, SEO requires you to optimize your web pages to the standards of best practices to maintain your rank.
Drawbacks of PPC:
- PPC is expensive. Without proper budgeting, you cannot run a PPC ad. You have to pay for every click done by a member, and the more you pay, the more you get results. The moment you stop using money, your website traffic results drop.
- PPC ads disappear when a campaign ends. Once PPC is turned off, you pause from getting leads. When your ads get discontinued, the traffic and sales reduce as well. If you are cash trapped then, then it may not be easy to sustain PPC. SEO gives your website consistency. That once it picks, there is no stopping.
- PPC is time-consuming. PPC marketing campaigns are very time-consuming. The fitness studio has to regularly invest its time in research, optimization, and improvement of ads to get the best results.
- PPC brings about the issue of “Click Fraud”. Some fitness studio use software that creates human clicks from different locations around the globe. Your competitors can rapidly rack up your click charges. Google can detect some of this fraud, but there are ways to evade this detection.
Which one is right for your Fitness Studio SEO or PPC?
When designing your website, You may choose to do just SEO, or Together. The decision will be based on your financial position and the industry you are in. An organic SEO and a well-developed PPC campaign can help rank your website. If you have a proper budget and need immediate results, PPC marketing is the best option. But it can still take time and trial and error to hone in on ads that convert without overpaying for results.
Engaging SEO can provide stable and long-term results if you are taking things slow and don’t need to see results immediately. With SEO, you will improve your online presence in the long run without paying for website traffic.
Nevertheless, an integrated marketing search that combines SEO and PPC is the optimum approach. By utilizing both organic and paid, results are improved.