SEO vs PPC for Real Estate Investors: Which Channel to Invest In?

As a real estate investor, you are probably trying to figure out whether you should invest in SEO (search engine optimization) or PPC (pay per click) to generate motivated leads.

In this guide, I’ll share with you all the advantages and disadvantages (including costs, speed of results, quality of leads, etc.) of each marketing channel, so you could make a more educated decision for your specific situation.

#1 SEO

Before we get into it, I want to let you know that I’m not going to explain here what SEO is.

I assume that you already know what it is and you are simply trying to find out whether you should invest in SEO over PPC.

In case you don’t know what search engine optimization is, here is a great video explaining it in detail.

Now that it is out of the way, let’s talk about SEO for real estate investors and its pros and cons as a marketing channel.

Side note: The costs listed below are based on the scenario in which you hire a third-party service provider rather than doing it yourself.

Advantages of SEO

• Cost-effective: While quality SEO services for real estate investors are not cheap, it is often lower than the cost of PPC. That said, the cost of SEO greatly varies depending on the scope of a project. However, typically, you should expect to invest between $2,500-$5,000 per month when you optimize your website for your target local area.

• High ROI: As long as the SEO for real estate investors is executed correctly, the quality of leads is often superior to PPC. While quality of leads generated through pay-per-click advertising is somewhat similar to those generated through search engine optimization, most of the real estate investors report greater ROI on SEO leads.

• Credibility boost: Websites ranked highly in search engines receive instant credibility boost because most consumers trust organic search results. In other words, if Google/Bing lists your website on the top of its organic search results, that serves as a powerful endorsement positioning you as a credible industry expert in your market.

• Compounding effect: Consistent SEO efforts compound over time, which often results in continuous traffic growth reaching greater and greater audiences. Compounding effect is one of SEO’s key components that makes this marketing channel unbelievably cost-effective in the long run compared to PPC.

• Traffic predictability: While search engines’ algorithms can be quite volatile from time to time, including major changes every five years or so, generally, with dynamic and adaptive SEO strategy, the traffic generated through search engines remains fairly predictable compared to PPC.

• Lasting exposure: Unlike PPC, which is essentially a pay-per-play channel, SEO can offer a business long-lasting exposure even after you, for some reason, decide to stop investing in it. There is perhaps no other marketing channel in existence today besides SEO that can offer such incredible benefit.

• Brand awareness: By constantly showing up on the first page for relevant real estate investor keywords, this makes homeowners associate your brand with that subject matter. Over time, your potential customers get more familiar with your company, which translates to your brand being more recognizable as a whole.

Disadvantages of SEO

• Slow results: Unlike PPC, search engine optimization takes considerably longer time to see meaningful results. That said, while organic SEO usually takes more time to kick in, the local SEO (maps) can often start generating leads within the very first month. Of course, it all depends on different variables and can vary from case to case.

• Limited control: Since the impact of your SEO efforts is often delayed, the results you see today are the fruits of the activities you have done a few months prior. This slow feedback loop makes search engine optimization much less controllable marketing channel in comparison to PPC.

• Algorithm dependency: Search engines constantly update their algorithms. In particular Google. Therefore, when you invest in SEO, you must be aware that certain strategies that have worked well in the past might become obsolete in the future, which will require pivoting to a new strategy.

• Measurable results: Measuring return on investment from SEO is not as cut and dry as most of the paid advertising channels like PPC. It is often quite challenging to precisely isolate ROI of search engine optimization efforts from other marketing channels and it often involves manual calculations.

#2 PPC

While PPC technically applies to any advertising network or platform that utilizes the cost-per-click bidding model, in this guide I’ll be specifically discussing PPC ads when it comes to the largest, search-driven PPC platform — Google Ads.

Now that we are clear on what we’re comparing SEO to, let’s talk about the pros and cons of the PPC marketing channel for real estate investors.

Side note: The costs listed below are based on the scenario in which you hire a third-party service provider rather than doing it yourself.

Advantages of PPC

• Instant results: Unlike SEO that usually takes longer time to kick in, pay-per-click advertising gets your ads in front of your target audience literally as soon as your PPC campaign is launched. In other words, if you opened up your real estate investment company yesterday, you can start getting deals rolling in already today.

• Precise targeting: While SEO inherently offers a considerable audience targeting precision, PPC takes it to a completely different level through its sophisticated targeting capabilities. This is a huge advantage for real estate investors who are interested in targeting only specific audience segments.

• Measurable results: A huge advantage of PPC over search engine optimization is that it’s highly measurable. When advertising through pay-per-click platforms like Google Ads, you are able to effectively measure return on investment and continuously keep improving it to increase your campaign’s profitability.

• Flexible budget: With pay-per-click advertising channels, you can easily control your monthly ad spend according to your marketing budget. It gives you a great sense of flexibility in your real estate investment business, allowing you to scale your ad spend up or down at any given point of time.

• Full control: Unlike SEO, when it comes to pay-per-click advertising, you have full control over your campaign. Whether it’s to target a certain geographical location or show your ads during specific times of a day or on particular days only, it’s all possible through the PPC marketing channel.

Disadvantages of PPC

• Higher cost: When it comes to real estate investing, the cost per a single click can range from $20 to $100. The more competitive your market is, the higher cost per click will be. Typically, we suggest not even start doing PPC if you are not willing to invest at least $3k per month on ads alone, plus a typical $1-$1.5k for the management.

• Ongoing maintenance: Unlike SEO that requires minimal upkeep on a monthly basis, PPC demands regular campaign optimization and monitoring. To make sure your campaign keeps high performance, you’ll need to consistently revise keywords, bids, ad copy, and much more.

• Short-lived exposure: Unlike SEO that offers long-lasting exposure even after you stop investing in it, PPC requires ongoing investment. Like all the pay-per-play advertising avenues, the moment you stop paying for your PPC campaign, your ads will stop running immediately and so will your leads.

Takeaway

Depending on your marketing budget and maturity of your real estate investment business, one of these two excellent marketing channels may be more beneficial than the other.

For instance, if you’ve just started your company and you need an immediate influx of motivated seller leads, your best bet would probably be real estate investor PPC services.

However, if you’ve been in business for quite a while and you already have a decent flow of leads, it’d perhaps be best to consider real estate investor SEO services to add another quality lead source.

That said, while SEO and PPC have their pros and cons, the ultimate goal is to utilize both channels if you really want to crush it.

Sure, it will be costly to invest in both, but the potential ROI from combining SEO and PPC is exponential!

There is a reason why the most successful investors in the industry who run companies that buy houses for cash spend $10k, $20k, $50k, and sometimes $150k per month on PPC and/or SEO.

In order to be successful in this business, as well as any other business for this matter, you must be willing to invest in marketing.

And it doesn’t matter if you do it in-house or hire a reputable company to provide you with professional real estate investor marketing services; if you willing to invest in your business, you will crush it!

I’m looking forward to hearing your success story in the near future after you implement what you’ve learned from this guide.

I’d love to feature your own story among many other inspiring real estate investor success stories on our popular real estate investing blog.

Finally, if this guide provided value to you, I’d be grateful if you share it with other real estate investors who you think will greatly benefit from it, too.

I wish you best of luck, and thank you for your attention!