I was in a sorority when I first went to college (we won’t expand on that). Along with the other elements of a hierarchy of ridiculousness that is inherent in such an organization, we had a trendy sorority “mom” who invested heavily in liposuction and weight loss devices for the lazy and unmotivated. One of the coolest gadgets she used was a fat-reducing blender machine. Essentially, she strapped herself into a device with a vibrating belt and let the pounds melt away on their own.

As naive as I was at the time, I knew this wouldn’t work as she wanted a quick and easy solution to shrink her chubby midsection. And we all know that there is no gain without pain. As most people know, the best way to reduce “fat” is to increase muscle gain, which requires a significant amount of resistance training and, in most cases, an expensive gym pass to a club of health.

How does this relate to online marketing? Well, some might say that the difference between weight loss scams and real exercise and acute dieting is directly related to PPC (pay per click) and SEO (search engine optimization). One is a quick and easy fix, while the other requires a bit more time and effort.

Marketing Collaborative is a proponent of PPC advertising as we have multiple accounts that contribute little to Google’s pocket. However, there is a significant difference between the two advertising mediums that can be compared with resistance weight training and the rapid fat reduction methods mentioned above.

SEO, at first, can be a slow process that generates little traffic, although there are exceptions to this scenario. It takes more time and effort, is usually less money, and will produce more over a period of time. Once given enough momentum to build on itself, SEO will drive more traffic and generate a higher ROI than its PPC competitor. In fact, its beauty lies in the fact that you won’t be penalized for SEO’s ability to drive a lot of traffic to your website. The reason why organic listings (the place on the left of the page, the place where SEO takes you) is more trusted by search engines and generates about 75% of all clicks. It’s like going to the gym every day to lift weights: it’s slow and painful at first, but it pays big dividends in the end (or so I’m told).

PPC, on the other hand, is like the vibrating belt apparatus. It’s quick and easy: a campaign can be up and running in a few minutes and will start driving traffic to your website right away. PPC advertising tends to be expensive and temporary, and will not improve over time. Once you stop paying, all your traffic will be gone. To make matters worse, keywords used in PPC advertising will only get more expensive over time as more companies move their advertising dollars online, driving up your cost per keyword. This will significantly reduce the ROI of Pay-Per-Click. In the future, there will be a bidding war that heavily favors advertisers with big marketing budgets.

There you have it. Would you rather have a fat-reducing blender machine as your hype, or a muscle-building fighting machine? The choice is yours.