Many a friend and family member has heard me share this old adage, “comparison is the thief of the joy.” In general, drawing comparisons between your personal or professional life with others just leads to heartache and disappointment. And, as I’m also prone to share, no two people’s lives take the same path, and in keeping with different paths, different outcomes follow. But, most importantly, we all need to forever keep the following in mind. People don’t tend to share the tough stuff that’s going on with their career, job, or personal life on social media. So, drawing comparisons with others, based on what you see or read on social media, again, is pretty pointless and just a recipe for unhappiness.
Okay, coming down from my soap box now about making comparisons between yourself and others, to address the title of this post. While it’s not mentally healthy to draw comparisons with others, when it comes to the products and services your organizations offers, it can be quite fruitful from an SEO standpoint to draw comparisons, and therefore, be “business-healthy.”
In our “Give The People What They Want” blog post about the SEO benefits of answering popular questions people have about the products or services you offer, we called out an SEO tool called “Answer The Public.” Using the tool to create a list of questions that individuals are searching on related to a particular product or service has repeatedly demonstrated to me that many people are either asking Google questions like, “how does abc compare to xyz? and “what’s the difference between abc and xyz?” Or, they are entering into Google statements vs. questions that ultimately still indicate they need answers. An example of the latter is simply “abc vs. xyz.”

The SEO Win Of Addressing Client Confusion
Given the number of people regularly entering comparison questions or statements into Google, why not make sure your website is found for those questions and statements (and, their answers, of course) by addressing them in an FAQ (frequently asked questions) and/or other sections of your website? Here’s a few examples from our own business:
- Q: What’s the difference between organic search/organic SEO and paid SEO/paid search? A: Paid search or paid SEO is the practice of purchasing advertising from Google or other search engines so that an ad that links to your website will be served up at the top of search engine results for search terms relevant to the products and services you offer.
- Q: When to use paid SEO/paid search tactics vs. organic search/organic SEO services? A: As we shared in our “SEM and SEO: Understanding the Difference and When to Employ Each Digital Marketing Tactic” blog post, three key reasons for employing paid SEO tactics vs. organic SEO tactics include: you need your site to rank well immediately on Google and can’t wait for organic tactics to gradually move the SEO needle; your organization is in an extremely competitive environment and no amount of organic SEO tactics is going to get your site ranking above more-established/-entrenched competitors; Google is serving up a particular page of your site for various search terms vs. the page of your site you want it to serve up for those search terms.
Let Us Help You Draw Business-Healthy Comparisons
Need help figuring out what comparison-related content to include on your website, and where to include it? Reach out today to schedule a complimentary SEO discussion.