It’s reasonable to believe that 80% of all Internet traffic starts with a search engine. The online marketing environment has become centrally located around the concept of ‘search’, with both organic and PPC strategies being utilised to reach different traffic or ROI goals. Neither of these methods (organic being SEO and PPC being pay per click) can be considered a once - off investment which won’t require long-term attention and maintenance.

A business owner or recruiter who is not incorporating a search engine strategy will be severely restricting the amount of candidates their website and job posts receive. If you are invisible in the results - you are indeed, quite literally, invisible. This negatively affects online candidate generation, as visibility is the predecessor to interaction and engagement online – which then leads to hiring quality candidates.

Sure PPC can contribute to longer lasting branding strategies but it’s essentially a returning cost. SEO provides more lasting results and measurable ROI, but is also a long-term investment. So once again we reach the question of when to use one or the other? Most people will say that to ensure a more holistic presence online you need to use both.

Neither SEO nor PPC is are considered as a temporary or quick fix strategy. Both elements are valuable assets within the online marketing mix, and are even more so when they work in conjunction with one another. Combined, the two can return better results as they are valuable assets within the online marketing mix, PPC contributes to brand building efforts, while SEO can build a permanent presence online (the costs of which can be amortized over time).

So how do you know when your website is one of the few that doesn’t need both solutions and just only one or the other?

The decision of where to focus your online marketing budget rests on your budget amount and goals, as well as your specific target market and user behaviour patterns or trends. There is a definite relationship between a website’s appearance in the SERPs and the amount of traffic they will enjoy. Latest eye tracking studies have shown that the more educated exec markets using google will pay considerable attention to the natural seo listings than the pay per click ’sponsored’ advertising on the right. This will be important if trying to attract exec candidates.

BtoB Magazine indicates that 2nd or even 3rd page rankings can increase website traffic by up to 9 times! If a website appears in the Top 10 or even gets a place in the first page listings, it can mean an additional 6 fold increase in your traffic and employer brand exposure. The impact of these figures are extraordinary for any kind of recruitment or HR orientated website.

The optimal way to arrive at a conclusion on whether you may need SEO or PPC solutions essentially rests on gathering certain data and analysing user behavior: “How does my target candidate currently search for potential positions? What phrases are they using and which are more popular than others?”

There are a number of existing SEO resources and tools out there that estimate the predicted volume of a given search query. Yet still the best way forward is to partner with experienced and trusted SEO professionals that can analyse and diagnose this data on your behalf. Essentially it’s the same principle as wanting to see a qualified doctor with the proper equipment when you’re sick, rather than a college student with a lucky packet stethoscope who charges half the price.