When it come to driving search traffic to your website, there is nothing like the one-two punch of SEO and PPC.
SEO for Free Traffic
Organic search traffic is the holy grail of digital marketing. Search Engine Optimization (S.E.O.) is the set of efforts to gain more organic traffic. Organic traffic is sometimes referred to as "free traffic", but, nothing in Marketing is really free. There is always a trade-off of time resources and dollar investments to gain some attention, to drive traffic to your website. But organic traffic is the closest thing to free traffic there is, and, an added benefit is that organic traffic is often the highest quality source of traffic. That assumes that your SEO and your website content are targeted at people who would find value in what your business has to offer. In the case of a hunting outfitter, this would be hunters looking to book a trip to your camp for the species that you offer.
Not all Traffic Comes for Free
As an outfitter, you know you have competitors. In the past days of tradeshows being the most important Marketing channel, this might have been the booth next door or across the aisle. Your booth visitors would likely visit your booth, talk to you for a while, flip through your photo albums, and maybe leave you a name, phone number and email. Then straight to the next booth. At least you know exactly who your competition is and when you follow up with the lead, you should have a strategy to position your camp based on it's strengths relative to your competitors. On search engines, your competition is not as obvious. It is the rest of the outfitters for your species in the province, plus the next one to the west and to the east.
The amount of "free traffic" you will receive from organic sources is going to depend on how strong your website ranks for the many varied search terms your visitors might use. A search for "Saskatchewan Trophy Whitetail" will likely yield different search results than "Canada Whitetail Outfitters". Some of the same websites may appear, but likely the list is different. If you are strong for one of these terms, but not the other, then you are not in the game for all this traffic. But there are two solutions.
1. Invest in Content and SEO
If you have the time to be patient, that is, you don't really need the leads to fill your bookings, then Investing in new content and SEO efforts to target that weak search term is a good long term strategy.
2. Invest in PPC for Traffic Now
If you need to drive traffic now, then your best Marketing tactic will be to pay for the traffic, to invest in a Pay Per Click (PPC)campaign.
PPC to Fill in the Holes
In our example of two search terms (their may actually be a dozen or more) that your target market uses frequently, you can use Pay Per Click such as Google Ads to fill in the holes in your search rankings. Properly constructed campaigns can target the search terms where you are weak and buy you time, while gaining you bookings. While organic traffic (the holy grail) is often the highest quality traffic, a good PPC campaign will still delivery very high quality traffic, hunters with your location and your species on their bucket list and looking to take the next step towards booking a trip.
PPC Feeds your SEO Work
As an extremely valuable by product of running PPC campaigns, the data reporting in tools such as Google Ads will be a wealth of search terms your traffic used to find your ads and find your website. This should then feed your SEO efforts. Pay for the traffic now and work on your website to get this traffic organically.
Summary: SEO & PPC
So as a One-Two Marketing Punch, the combination of SEO and PPC is a hard combination to beat.