The Difference Between SEO, Contextual, and Targeted Advertising: Their Advantages and Disadvantages

Which internet marketing tool should you choose to speed up your business growth? Let’s say this – each has its pros and cons, so it can bring benefits. Today, we will compare three tools – SEO, targeting, and context, so you can choose the most suitable for you.

Features of SEO, its Pros and Cons

The advantages of such an internet marketing tool as SEO include:

• No need to spend money. Organic search will only offer you free traffic. The only thing you will need to invest in are links and web page content.
• Long-term effect. You will receive results even if you stop website promotion for a while. Traffic will keep coming just like before. Other tools cannot boast of this feature.
• Ability to influence reputation. You can achieve SERM results with SEO and PR articles. For example, a user looks for you, encounters data about you, learns more, and clicks on the link to your website. A great option to boost traffic.
• Website development. The more developed the site, the more traffic it gets. You can improve web page content with new texts, videos, and images.
• The envy of competitors. Your competitors definitely keep an eye on you! And if your site is well-developed, it will be at the top of search results. SEO will help you outshine your competitors.

SEO also has some drawbacks:

• Not meaningful to promote an unknown product by brand queries using SEO. It’s simply not searched for as no one knows about it.
• Not the fastest results. Today, you will need to spend to upload content, buy links, but you won’t get results tomorrow, or even in a month. You might see some shifts in a few months or even half a year. If you’re willing to wait, then SEO promotion suits you.

Context or Contextual Advertising: What Can Be Said About This Tool

Initially, let’s list the advantages of contextual advertising:

• The effect is almost immediately visible. A good specialist will take just a few hours to create an ad. And on the first day of its placement, you will already start getting orders.
• Geolocation. It is very convenient that you can specify your city. And not just the city, but the exact location, by specifying the distribution area, for example, within 10 km.
• You can exclude unnecessary words. So-called negative keywords can be easily removed so that the ad doesn’t appear to those who are not interested. For instance, the word “free” doesn’t influence the ability to find potential clients.
• Paid clicks. A fee is charged only for clicks, meaning actions performed with a specific purpose.
• No need to heavily develop the web resource. A landing page you can make yourself in a special constructor. But you can also ask a specialist for such a service.

Briefly, let’s list the negative sides of context:

• Need for investments. To ensure the ad always occupies a place in search results, you have to pay for it regularly. As soon as you stop paying, it will disappear.
• Unattractive price. Context is quite an expensive affair, and you’ll have to pay for each click.

Targeting or Targeted Advertising: What is It

The advantages of this internet marketing tool include:

• The effect is almost immediate. Thanks to targeting, you can instantly get a lot of clicks, views, and orders.
• User filters. You can select a target audience by age, gender, place of residence, and interests.
• You can create demand. This feature is practiced by social networks.
• To ensure traffic, a landing page will be enough. There is also another way – create a form and get leads, which is practiced by real estate companies.
• There are no keywords.

Finally, targeting also has drawbacks:

• Does not function everywhere. Not capable of operating in urgent service situations.
• High cost.
• You will have to pay for accidental clicks. For example, on social networks, users often click on a request without need.

We have provided you with all the available information about the most popular internet marketing tools in an easy-to-understand manner. We hope the article was helpful to you!