To Celebrate the Champions League final, we are going to use a football analogy to explain SEO and Google Ads. In the battle of SEO vs Google ads the 2 finalists are Brentfor (Team SEO) and Newcastle (Team Google ads).
When it comes to developing a digital marketing strategy, both strategies work but some organisations are better suited to SEO and others Google ads.
In this article we will discuss both options and what makes them suited to some but not to others.
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Why are Brentford like SEO
Bretford ended the ‘08 – ‘09 season as a league 2 side. Now fast forward to 2022 and Brentford FC are a competitive premier league team with wins over big clubs such as Chelsea. How did they achieve this? Well according to the team themselves, “If David wants to beat Goliath, you can’t do that by using the same weapons.”
To overcome a lack of budget, Brentford took on the “Moneyball” approach, which was made popular by the 2002 Oakland A’s MLB team.
For any small organisation with little to no budget, taking an analytical approach will take a long time and require a lot more work then bigger competitors.
If you are a small business in a similar position to Brentford, putting time into researching how websites rank on google, rearching what the top online competitors did to get to where they are, and correctly implementing an SEO strategy will help you eventually compete with bigger companies (The Brentford squad value is £400 million compared to chelsea’s £1 Billion squad).
It took Brentford 13 years to reach the premier league from league 2. While hopefully it will take you less than 13 years to rank for your chosen keywords, SEO can still take up to a year to rank for even niche areas.
The biggest advantage for both SEO and Brentford is that even if they begin to use other strategies that fail, they have already built a solid base that will last for years to come.
Why are Newcastle United like Google Ads
Newcastle United were on the verge of relegation this season with their first win not coming until 15 games into the season and their second win not coming for another 6 games. So how did they manage to get to their current position at 10th? (at the time of writing) Well that’s actually quite a simple answer. They got bought by a billionaire.
Google ads can have a similar effect for a business who are struggling to attract users to their site. Being able to choose the search results you want to appear top in is a very foolproof way to be competitive.
The downside of both Newcastle United and Google ads is that if their money stops, then so does their success. Google ads don’t have any direct effect on SEO (however, high traffic to the site over time will help). This means that if one day you run out of your budget and can’t afford google ads, you will have to start from where Brentford were in 2009.
Just like how Google ads wouldn’t have worked in Brenfords situation, SEO would not have worked in Newcastles. If instead Newcaslt had chosen for some reason to not have been bought out by a billionaire and choose the analytical approach instead, it would have not worked as effectively.
Newcastle were in the premier league but on their way down. If they had chosen the Brentford route, they would have been back in league 1 or 2 by the time they began to notice results from it.
Who wins?
If Newcastle v Brentford matched up in the champions league final tomorrow and if I was a betting man (which I am), no doubt my money is on Newcastle to win. But if the final was played in 5 years, a betting man would put their money on brentford.
Are you looking to implement Google ads or SEO into your digital marketing strategy?
If Google ads or SEO are something you might be interested in but dont have the budget, there are website grants available from the Local Enterprise Office that can help. The trading Online Voucher allows up to 30% of the grant funding to be spent on digital marketing.
Get in touch in the contact form below and a member of our team will get back to you with information on if you are eligible or not for the grant.