Why SEO & PPC Take Time (And When You’ll See ROI)

What is SEO and PPC? Why does SEO & PPC take time to work? And how long does it take to increase traffic and leads to your business?

Quick Answer

Organic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay-Per-Click (PPC) are two different ways to increase traffic to your website. SEO does this by increasing your website’s organic visibility, and PPC does this by showing paid ads for your website. Both services take time to start increasing the number of leads your company receives. PPC can work quickly, increasing leads within 1 – 2 months. SEO, however, takes longer. Active SEO enhancements typically take 3 – 6 months to produce increased leads for your business. Why is this? Let’s look at some reasons why SEO & PPC take time to work.

What Is SEO?

First off, let’s define what these terms actually mean. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Search Engine Optimization is the ongoing process of increasing your website’s visibility and ranking on search engines in an effort to maximize quality traffic to your website. Search engines are programs that search for and find items in a database, in this case, your website. The most popular ones that you know and love in the United States are Google, Bing, and Yahoo!, though according to recent research, nearly 90% of all search traffic in the US happens on Google alone.

Why Is SEO Important?

SEO is important because studies consistently show that the higher your rank on Google, the higher your website’s click-through rate (CTR) is. CTR is the percentage of people who see a link to your website on search engines and actually click on it. Another way to understand this is that if 100 people see your link, and 10 click on it, then you have a 10% CTR. The higher your page’s CTR, the more clicks it will get. Now, when searching on Google, you will notice that there are over 10 pages of search results. However, only .63% of searchers click on a link on the second page. That means 99% of people searching on search engines click on a link on the first page of responses, and Google only shows 10 organic responses on each page. In fact, it is estimated that the top 3 Google search results receive over 50% of all clicks in each search. Doing SEO to increase your website’s rank can cause incredible increases to web traffic and leads to your business.

What Is PPC?

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) is the process of creating ads for your website in order to increase targeted web traffic to your business. It is called Pay-Per-Click because you only pay when someone actually clicks on your ad. When you search on Google and see a “sponsored” result, that is a PPC ad.

Why Is PPC Important?

PPC is important because search engines show ads whenever you use them, and they are now placed at the top and bottom of the page. This means being the top placed ad will show your business even before the top organic position. The downside of this is that paid search ads receive less than 10% of all clicks on search engines. Then why pay for ads? Because they receive almost 65% of clicks for high commercial intent keywords. Think of keywords as what you type into Google when searching for something, like “what is SEO”. Commercial intent keywords are keywords that people typically use when they are ready to make a purchase. Here is a quick example: If you just bought a house and your inspector says you need new gutters, you will likely search something like “how much do house gutters cost” or “types of house gutters”. These are keywords you use when you are just looking for information. After doing your research, you decide that you want simple aluminum gutters placed on your home, so you search “aluminum gutter installers near me”. This is a high commercial intent keyword. You are ready to get quotes for your home and just want your options for who will install your gutters. If you were a gutter business and had an ad targeting that keyword, you would be more likely to get clicks on your ad for people who are ready to make a purchase.

Why does SEO take time?

Although SEO is incredibly valuable to businesses with websites, many business owners do not invest in it. This is because SEO can easily take 6 or more months to truly start increasing traffic to your business’s website, and over 12 months to rank on page 1 for competitive keywords. This is due to the increasing complexity of what it takes to rank on search engines, i.e., Google. Google uses an automated process, or “algorithm,” to review websites and decide where they should be ranked. While Google has never officially shown how many factors it takes into account in its algorithm, it is generally accepted that they use 200+ factors to rank your website. Google also makes regular updates to its algorithm, which can cause fluctuations on how your site ranks. They also do not always make it public when an update is coming, or what that update is changing. This means an SEO professional working on your website must go through great effort to stay informed on the ever-changing SEO landscape. This is compounded by the fact that SEO is competitive. If you begin to outrank a competitor, they will likely start updating their website to be better than yours. If you are creating a new website, or have a low-ranking website, your SEO professional will create a strategy for updating your website to the latest SEO standards and creating more content and pages targeting higher intent keywords to slowly increase your site’s rank. This makes SEO a constant upkeep for businesses looking to be the most competitive in their industry.

Why does PPC take time?

Thankfully, PPC can be effective in driving leads to your website in as few as 1 – 2 months. There are many fewer factors to consider to get your ads to show in front of people interested in your business. However, there is still the effort of finding the best, highest intent keywords for your product or service, and matching that intent in the language, or “copy”, used in your ads and placed on your landing page. The landing page is the specific webpage that your ad links to. If the intent used in your ads is informational, such as the “types of house gutters” we saw earlier, but the copy on your landing page is commercial, then the people clicking on your ads will be disappointed and leave after clicking to your site. This process of keyword discovery, writing ad copy and landing page copy, and testing optimizations at each step takes time and money, and is costly when handled by the incorrect people. The cost-per-click (CPC) of Google Ads can be as low as $0.50 for every click and as high as $500.00 per click for high-cost services like personal injury attorneys. This means the best, highest converting, ad campaigns should run for 2 – 3 months to capitalize on optimizations that your PPC professional will make.

AI?

Can’t ChatGPT, Claude, or some other AI make this faster? Or better yet, can they do this all for me? AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude can help speed up certain tasks, but they cannot fully replace the strategy, experience, and ongoing adjustments required for effective SEO and PPC. We will cover what AI can and can’t do for your search marketing in our next blog post.

If you’re tired of guessing, struggling, or waiting for your online marketing to finally “click,” you don’t have to navigate SEO and PPC alone. At TOTAL Advertising, our Search Marketing team is ready to guide your SEO and PPC strategy, removing the confusion, and building a plan that actually drives measurable growth. You deserve a website that brings in real traffic, real leads, and real revenue. If you’re ready to stop hoping and start scaling, connect with the TOTAL Advertising team today!

Written by

Amari Williams, Senior Search Marketing Specialist