Over the years, I’ve helped many early-stage startups gain traction with SEO campaigns, and I know many Search Engine Land readers have done the same with PPC.

Often, budgetary constraints and/or staff resources mean that you cannot undertake both types of campaigns at once: you will have to choose one.

This reminds me several times a week of people contacting me personally or on Slack groups or other forums to ask if they should invest in SEO (or paid) in the early stages of launch.

Without further information, I ask a series of questions to guide them to the correct answer:

• Do you need results now, or can you afford to be patient and build the foundation for steady growth?
• Do you know your market and your ideal customer perfectly?
• What does your target keyword list look like?
• How good (or bad) is your website?

Let’s look at the possible answers to these questions – and how they should dictate your priorities.

1. Which is more important: fast or steady?

I bet you know where I’m going with this: if you need immediate revenue, PPC is a much better play than SEO (assuming you have a good PPC strategy). But the old caveat applies: PPC is fleeting. You spend for every click, over and over again.

With SEO, of course, you’re building the foundation for growth that takes (best case scenario) weeks or even months to start gaining momentum, at least on Google.

(Note: You can and should diversify your bets and include platforms like TikTok, Reddit and Quora in your organic strategy, especially since the content contained there can produce more immediate engagement.)

My usual pitch to brands considering whether or not to invest early in SEO is threefold:

• Building an SEO foundation from the start helps improve all of your digital marketing initiatives (content, website architecture, site speed, conversion optimization) and develop a starting point for repeatable “free” traffic to your site .
• SEO thrives on education and content, which are essential for initial growth (you need to get in front of people, after all, and startups often need to educate users on this topic). Why they need an innovative new product or service.
• SEO has cumulative benefits that increase over time. When you start to rank for a keyword or develop expertise for a certain category, it’s easier to rank for the next keyword, so it’s best to start early.

2. How well do you know your market and your PCI?

If you’re confident you know your market (i.e. competitors, CPC/CPMs, your business’s specific differentiators and why and to whom they matter), then there may be a little less of arguments to immediately dive into SEO. (Although you’d be better off creating content that informs users about your differentiators.)

One of the great benefits of SEO is growing your position in the market, helping users understand who you are and how you stack up. You also establish a nuanced feedback loop about what you might be getting wrong in the marketplace and your most valuable users. .

SEO and paid search will return data on things like:

• Low impressions/CTR (your content doesn’t resonate).
• Time on page (your content is not what the user is looking for).
• Conversion rate (you have the wrong offer for this stage of the funnel).
• And more.

The difference is that SEO doesn’t require you to pay for empty clicks/CPMs to find out.

If you don’t need to invest in this kind of research, then great. But if you feel like there’s more to learn about your market, it’s not the right time to run lots of paid campaigns.

3. How accurate are your keywords?

Take it from me (or just about any paid search professional worth their salt): you don’t want to rely on broad keywords and/or Performance Max or other bidding algorithms and AI-powered targeting tools to achieve revenue tailored to ROAS.

If you have a few exact match keywords in mind with decent search volume and intent and the right offer, invest money in paid campaigns.

These keywords can also be interesting to talk about from an SEO perspective, but SEO is not just about a good keyword strategy.

Today, search algorithms incorporate natural language, context, topic authority, intent, semantic relevance, and more. In other words, a few pages filled with mentions of that exact keyword won’t do the trick.

Let’s say you are more concerned with engaging your customer on a variety of related topics and building your authority in your field than owning specific keywords. In this case, SEO is a great place to start.

4. How good (or bad) is your website?

Remember my point about how SEO will force you to approach your marketing more holistically?

If your website is slow, cluttered, confusing, unattractive, or not optimized for mobile and you need short- to medium-term growth, focus on creating a few PPC-friendly landing pages to your campaigns. Spend a ton of resources cleaning up your website before you start developing valuable content.

If your website is fast, intuitive, and easy to navigate, you have a fantastic foundation for content-driven growth. This should definitely be taken into account when thinking about how to leverage your resources.

Choosing Between SEO and Paid Search for Your Startup

There are other factors to consider, such as utilization rate/available funds, team strengths, and competition/CPC levels of your targeted keywords. Dive into the next layer if you don’t have clear direction after evaluating your answers to the questions above.

If you’re still hesitant, pick one and go for it. But before you do that, make sure you have a plan for measuring results, evaluating the success (or failure) of your campaigns, and pivoting if necessary.