Glossary comparison

SEO vs PPC

SEO and PPC both win visibility on search results pages, but in different ways. SEO earns unpaid organic rankings, which take months to build and keep working. PPC buys ad placements through an auction, with traffic that starts as soon as ads are approved and stops when spending stops.

Reviewed by Gareth Hoyle, Managing Director
Last reviewed 31 October 2026

SEO and PPC compared

	SEO	PPC
How you pay	No fee per click; pay for content and technical work	Pay per click, priced by an auction
Speed	Usually months to build rankings	Traffic as soon as ads are approved
When spending stops	Rankings and traffic usually persist for a time	Ad traffic stops straight away
Control	Google decides rankings	You control keywords, copy, budget and landing page
Can money buy placement?	No, organic placement cannot be bought	Yes, Ad Rank weighs bid and ad quality
Placement	Organic results, snippets and AI Overviews	Labelled ad slots on the results page
Testing	Changes take weeks to show	Copy and offers testable within days
Best for	Evergreen and informational demand	Launches, offers and high-intent commercial terms

When to use each

Google says no one can buy better placement in its organic results, so SEO is the only route to them. It suits demand that will still exist in two years: category pages, guides and the questions buyers ask before they are ready to choose. PPC suits anything that needs traffic now or for a fixed period.

Use PPC for launches, sales, events and new sites that cannot rank yet
Use PPC to test which keywords and messages convert before investing in content
Use SEO for informational queries, where ads are expensive or absent
Use SEO to lower dependence on rising click costs over time

How SEO and PPC work together

The two share the same results page, the same searchers and the same keyword data, which is why most businesses plan them together. PPC's search terms report shows which queries convert, which tells SEO where to build pages. Strong organic rankings show where paid spend may add least.

Pausing ads on terms you already rank for is tempting but worth testing. In 2011 Google reported that across more than 400 studies, 89% of paid clicks lost when ads were paused were not replaced by organic clicks. That figure is Google's own average, so test it against your own account before cutting spend.

Example

A garden furniture retailer launches a new range in March. Google Ads brings sales from the first week while the new category page is too new to rank. By the following spring the page ranks on page one, and the retailer tests reducing bids on the range's broadest terms while keeping ads on high-margin product queries.