The Best SEO/PPC Analogy + An SEO Quick Start Guide

This is my new favorite analogy of SEO vs PPC (pay per click):

“SEO is like planting a garden, while PPC is going to the grocery store.
If you need to eat tonight, you don’t plant a garden, you go to the grocery store.
But, you should still plant your garden now so that in time, you won’t have to go to the grocery as often, or spend as much money there.
But, if you have to eat today, you don’t only plant a garden. Or, you are gonna starve.”

This couldn’t be more accurate.

A few weeks prior to that, one of my favorite marketers posted a very popular LinkedIn post that summarizes that feeling you get when you neglect to garden (do SEO):

So what’s the point?

The point is, it is really important to make sure you feed your business today (as an owner, I get that).

If you need results now, there are better marketing and sales activities to invest in than SEO.

But, if you want to get to a place where you almost never need to worry about getting “results now” because results keep coming and compounding over time, then start working on your garden (SEO) today.

A garden takes a while to build, so don’t expect to start growing today.

Find out where you’re going to build your garden, what you should plant, and what tools you’ll need today.

Where to start gardening.

If you are looking for a great place to start, do this:

1. Go to your Google Search Console (sign up if you don’t have it already).
2. Look at your performance over the last 6 months and view your top pages.
3. Pick a page and look at the queries (keywords) you show up for.
4. Find queries with low numbers of clicks that you could add more context to on that given page.
5. Update the content and watch your traffic to that page increase.