Many businesses and agencies struggle to harmonize their SEO and PPC efforts. Here, we discuss some tactics for integrating the two channels in ways that can enhance each other – and increase your bottom line.
In some ways SEO and PPC can seem like completely different marketing channels. Paid Search can generate almost immediate results. SEO takes a lot of time and focused effort to bear fruit. However, the two channels share many important features. A good crossover strategy between the two can yield even greater results than utilizing just one channel alone. Mileage for the tactics we’ll discuss here varies by industry. Online businesses in particular will benefit from an integrated approach to eCommerce SEO and Paid Search.
Benefits for both SEO and PPC
First, let’s look at a short list of the ways both SEO and PPC can mutually benefit from integration:
Keyword Sharing
Keyword sharing is knowledge sharing. It forms the foundation of an integrated approach to SEO and PPC. Paid Search and SEO Specialists approach keyword research differently and often end up with very different results. Sharing knowledge across teams helps shore up your overall keyword strategy and highlights important areas of overlap that both teams can focus on in tandem.
SERP Saturation
Taking up as much real estate on search engine results pages (SERPs) as possible is good for your brand. Not only is it less space for your competitors to show up, it features your business more prominently. Want to stand out quick? Control the SERPs. Adjust your PPC strategy to accommodate for topics that you already rank organically for and watch your branded searches increase.
How PPC Can Benefit From SEO
Many of the content and UX recommendations SEOs make will ultimately benefit Paid Search. On-Page SEO in particular can have a huge impact on Paid Search. A close integration with SEO can yield:
- Improved Paid Search Quality Scores (thanks to an improved Landing Page Experience, or “LPE” for short)
- Increased Ad Rank & Higher Ad Position
- Lower Cost-Per-Click (CPC)
- Higher Ad Position
- Higher Conversion Rate (when landing page relevance and UX are improved)
SEO and PPC can also converge around search trends. For example: if Organic traffic to certain content topics tends to increase on particular days of the week or times of the year, try increasing your ad spend around those trends to see if this improves PPC performance. You could also make this kind of analysis using Google Trends data, but the real-time feedback you get from traffic and engagement data on your own website will confirm or falsify this tactic’s effectiveness.
How SEO Can Benefit From PPC
It’s common knowledge that earned channels can benefit from being boosted and promoted with paid channels. That benefit extends further than just having more eyeballs on your content (although that benefit is definitely not to be underestimated – it’s the topic of the first bullet below for a reason):
- You can get visibility and traffic to content that isn’t ranking organically yet, giving that content a chance to get picked up and shared, which can in turn augment SEO with those all-important backlinks and social mentions
- Paid Search gan give some baseline engagement data and search demand data in the absence of adequate Organic traffic. With it you can vet the potential performance of content in Organic Search. If a piece of content or a specific topic bombs in Paid Search, you’ll know to think twice about investing too much in ranking organically with it
- (Even more) data sharing. Ad copy and creative that works well and has a high click-through in search results can be incorporated into page meta descriptions, creating consistent messaging that works to generate more clicks
- Use PPC reports as reconnaissance for SEO – they can identify competitors you may not have noticed and may need to research and strategize around
- Try using Remarketing to keep content that is valuable for SEO in front of people. Try using this tactic to show blog posts to people who’ve visited your site and viewed related content
- Use Paid Ad Sitelinks to generate traffic to deeper website content that is relevant to your ad – try this with potentially shareable content like blog posts, which could benefit from the attention of a wider audience
Final Thoughts
If your business is paying for both SEO and PPC and your agency doesn’t properly integrate the two, you’re missing opportunities for traffic, engagement, and conversions that you shouldn’t. If you’re a digital agency that just pays lip service to channel integration (or ignores it entirely), it’s way past time to get these two teams working closely together.
