Starting a blog may seem intimidating, especially if there is an unclear short-term payoff. So, you might turn to Google Ads over blogging because it increases traffic, and there is an obvious ROI right from the get-go. But that doesn’t mean that Google Ads are better than blogging.
Paying for advertising will increase traffic, but you will need to continue paying for those ads to maintain the traffic.
Blogging is better than Google Ads because a cohesive, ongoing blogging strategy can generate continuous organic traffic long after you’ve invested in the initial writing of the blog. Overall, blogging will be more cost-effective and have a higher ROI than Google Ads.
Here we will explain how blogging and paid advertising work so you can decide which strategies to adopt for your business.
How Blogging Generates Traffic
There are numerous ongoing benefits of blogging. Blogging increases the number of indexed pages on your site and the number of keywords your website can rank for, increasing organic traffic. Organic traffic comes from a search engine query – the reader lands on your website organically because Google believes your content answers their question (this is where SEO comes in).
SEO is search engine optimization which is the practice of optimizing a blog’s content and other website metrics, like site architecture, for search engines. This means content not only needs to be useful to the reader but also understood as useful by Google.
Search engines analyze the topical coverage and domain authority and ranks each page for worthiness through search engine ranking.
Therefore, by creating high-quality content that is relevant to your visitors and covers topics more comprehensively, then you are sending a message to Google, asking it to rank you higher and higher.
It’s important to point out that just blogging will along not be effective. You must employ SEO best practices, such as those recommended by Google:
- Make sure the writing is clear, helpful, and descriptive
- Explain the topic in simple, easy-to-read language.
- Include relevant keywords or words that summarize what a user might search for online
Creating quality content that helps answer customer questions and provides quality information with a solid call-to-action increases leads and drives sales. In particular, evergreen content increase the ROI for blogging because this type of content isn’t time-sensitive and continues to generate content for years to come.
How Google Ads and Other Paid Advertising Works
Paid online advertising is a method of marketing where companies pay a publisher to advertise their business. As with Google Ads, the business owner pays each time someone clicks on or views their ad.
Paid Advertising on Social Media
Paid social media advertising displays advertisements or sponsored marketing messages on popular social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, etc. Often this is pay-per-click advertising, where the business pays for content to reach a wider target audience on social media. However, paid advertising on social media could also include branded or influencer-generated content.
Pay Per Click
Pay-per-click (PPC) is an advertising strategy in which businesses pay a fee each time one of their ads is clicked. So, essentially, it’s a way of buying visits to your site rather than earning them organically through blogging.
Google Ads is the most popular PPC advertising system, but you can also use PPC advertising through platforms such as Bing.
With Google Ads, advertisers bid on keywords each time a search is initiated. Google looks through the pool of ads and chooses which will appear in the available ad space on the search results page. This process is called a Google Ad auction.
Which ads make it to the Google search page, i.e. who wins the auction, is based on an advertiser’s Ad Rank, which is calculated by multiplying two key factors:
- Cost per click (CPC) bid
- Quality Score
Advertisers tell Google when they make their ad the highest amount they’re willing to pay for a click on the ad; this is their CPC bid.
Quality Score is based on the following:
- How relevant is the ad to the intent of the query
- The expected click-through rate (how likely the ad gets clicked based on historical performance)
- User experience (how relevant the landing page is to the ad and how useful the experience is to consumers)
Remember, advertisers only pay when the ad gets clicked.
More Traditional Advertising Avenues
Of course, businesses use many other types of online paid advertisements.
Banner ads are paid online ads you will see in numerous places across the internet, such as industry pages, local news sites, etc. Banner ads are small rectangular ads that appear as a banner on other web pages and redirect to the website of the party responsible for the ad when clicked on.
Gmail-sponsored ads reach interested leads right in their inbox. Gmail-sponsored promotion ads appear like any other email at the top of a user’s mailbox with the added “ad” tag.
Affiliate marketing is another commonly used paid marketing strategy where an affiliate earns a commission for marketing another company or product. The affiliate promotes the product through social media or blog posts and shows potential customers why the product is valuable to them to convince them to purchase. The affiliate receives a portion of the revenue from sales generated from their promotion.
When to Use Blogging vs Google Ads
Both blogging and PPC advertising can be effective in their own ways, and the best way to determine which is best for your business is to consider your goals.
Google Ads (and other PPC ads) can drive short-term results with a reasonably easily calculated ROI.
Conversely, blogging drives consistent long-term growth and builds brand awareness and authority. It will take longer to see results from blogging, but once you’ve created a blog strategy and a base of evergreen content, you can maintain a baseline of ongoing organic traffic without ads.
5 Reasons Why Blogging Wins Over Google Ads
Numerous ongoing benefits of blogging make it a better long-term marketing strategy than Google Ads.
1. More Cost Effective
Blogs answer common questions readers and potential customers have, which will continue to be helpful to readers long after the blog post is initially published. A consistent blogging schedule will help to establish your brand as an industry leader or expert by building a base of resources available to customers and other businesses. Blogging also helps to establish your brand as blog posts can be used to share your brand story, update customers, and share business or industry-related news.
Paid ads can have a high short-term return on investment; however, your business stops generating traffic as soon as the ads stop running or the budget is exhausted.
In contrast, if you’re paying for quality blog content, you pay a one-time price for the blog. It continues to drive traffic and generate leads months and even years after it’s published.
2. Drives Organic Traffic
Every blog you publish to your site is an additional indexed page that provides an opportunity to be found organically by your customers. Quality blog content that answers your customers’ questions increases the likelihood of your target audience finding your website.
3. Encourages Conversions
Every new potential customer a blog brings to your website is an opportunity to turn that visitor into a lead through calls-to-action (CTA). A CTA lets the reader know what you’d like them to do after reading the blog.
These CTAs can lead to newsletter sign-ups which develop mailing lists for inbound marketing strategies, a contact page, or a sales page.
4. Builds Brand Authority
As mentioned previously, exciting and educational, quality blog content can help develop your brand as an authority in your industry. Blogs that are valuable to your potential customers and other companies can lead to backlinks.
Backlinks are links on other websites that lead to an authoritative link on your website.
These links generate more traffic and help establish your business as an authority to readers and the Google algorithm. They are votes of confidence that signal you’re trustworthy.
5. It’s Becoming Increasingly Important for Google and Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
2023 trends suggest that more users avoid clicking on paid advertisements and instead go for what Google and other search engines rank organically. People don’t want to be forced into their choices anymore and instead want to make their own choices.
Even if Google Ads won’t ever go away (as is likely), it makes good business sense to start creating content that generates organic traffic through SEO now before it’s too late and you’re behind the draw.
Budget and Strategize for Both Content Marketing and Google Ads
Blogging can make all the difference in generating free, organic traffic to your website and converting those readers into customers. While Google Ads can provide a short-term increase in traffic, an ongoing blog strategy can continually generate traffic and provide a higher overall ROI.
Need help with developing, improving, or implementing a cohesive blog strategy? Need help producing high-quality blog content for your website? Check out okwrite’s Content Marketing services; we are happy to discuss what makes a successful content marketing strategy, how to develop a blog strategy to generate organic traffic, and how best to track metrics.
If you have any questions, contact us!
