SEO or SEA – when is advertising worthwhile?

Search engine optimization (also known as SEO) takes time! If you want to be displayed at the top of the organic search results and thus improve your visibility on the web, you need to be patient. After all, there are several steps to go through before a website is search engine optimized. Relevant keywords must be identified, the content of your pages must be designed and organized in a way that ensures they rank for certain keywords and the technical requirements, such as server accessibility and loading speed, should also be checked and improved. In addition, high-quality backlinks should be built and user-friendliness optimized. And even if you have taken care of all these points, the desired effects usually take some time to appear. However, once the site is ranking well, you can look forward to better results in the long term. Sometimes, however, you don’t have time to do all this. Especially when you have to react to situations at short notice. The summer sales are just one example of these short-term situations. In these cases, you want to acquire many new customers quickly and cannot optimize your website for the keyword “summer sale” in the long term. In cases where quick success is needed, SEA can help. SEA stands for Search Engine Advertising and describes the deliberate advertising on Google and Co.

In this blog post, you can find out when SEA is worthwhile, how you can benefit from SEA and how you can best use SEA and SEO.

What is SEA?

SEA refers to the placement of ads in the results list of search engines, primarily Google. These ads can appear in text form and are identified by the word “ad” in the top left-hand corner of the ad.

These ads are usually displayed in text form, consisting of a URL, a meaningful title and a small body of text describing what exactly is being offered. For example, if you search for “tutoring Aachen”, you will not initially see the organic search results in the search list, but 3 search ads. SEA for tutoring Aachen But ads are not only displayed in text form. Image ads can also be displayed. If you search for “shoes for men”, for example, you will first see a line with several image ads. SEO for men's shoes The advantage of SEA is obvious: the provider appears at the top of the search engine results page when searching for suitable keywords, thus receiving more hits and generating more sales. The disadvantage is just as obvious: you have to pay for ads. Whether SEO or SEA or a combination of both makes sense for a company therefore depends on the company. We want to help you use your investments profitably and therefore compare SEO and SEA below.

Comparison of SEO and SEA

1. Advantages and Disadvantages

SEO and SEA are both very sensible online marketing methods and should therefore be considered in any case if a company wants to increase turnover resulting from its online presence. To give you an overview of the advantages and disadvantages of SEO and SEA, we have put together a table with the advantages and disadvantages of SEO below.

SEO	SEA
High time expenditure	Low time expenditure
Improved results in the long term	Improved results in the short term
Free of charge	Associated with costs
Time lag between efforts and results	Direct results
Better position on the market in the long term	Short-term increase in sales

As you can see, SEO and SEA have some advantages and disadvantages. However, search engine optimization in particular should be pursued by every company that wants to establish itself in the online market in the long term. After all, no money needs to be spent on SEO. Of course, search engine optimization takes time and effort, but you will achieve better rankings in the long term and thus increase your sales.

However, if you need better results in the short term, you should supplement your SEO efforts with SEA. SEA can not only help to increase your results in the short term. If a user clicks on one of your ads and then stays on your website for a long time because it is very user-friendly, this in turn sends positive user signals to the search engines, which then rank you higher.

In the following decision tree, we will show you when you should use search engine advertising in addition to search engine optimization.

2. When should I consider SEA?

Most effective solution: SEO and SEA combined

As you can see, SEO and SEA are absolutely helpful tools for increasing the visibility of your company on the Internet and generating more clicks and sales. However, if you are not willing to invest money and/or time in search engine advertising or search engine optimization, you will not be able to stand out among the other providers and therefore will not be able to survive on the largest marketplace in the world, the Internet.

We therefore recommend that you invest in SEO and/or SEA. We are happy to support you and answer any questions you may have. Just get in touch with us.

The most effective online marketing solution is probably to combine SEO with SEA and thus rely on both long-term success through organic search results and a short-term boom due to advertisements. However, if you want to react quickly to seasonal trends, you can initially rely on SEA alone. If you are not prepared to spend money on ads and can wait for better results, investing time and personnel in SEO is perhaps the best option. You ultimately know which solution is best for you and your company. However, we are happy to support you in the decision-making process and implementation of your online marketing strategy.