While it’s true that the principles behind PPC and SEO are different, many businesses and agencies often make the mistake of planning completely different strategies for each channel.
However, SEO and PPC share the same platform and user base – they are both elements of search engine marketing. Because of this, an integrated digital marketing strategy can allow your PPC campaign to unlock new potential ways to improve the organic ranking of your website.
Here are just some of the ways that PPC can support decisions and drive performance within an SEO campaign:
Keywords
After Google moved to secure search in 2013, it became difficult to track which keywords organic conversions had come from within Google Analytics. This made it more challenging to define a keyword strategy for SEO.
PPC campaigns contain valuable data about which keywords bring in the highest traffic and which of these lead to the most conversions, making it a useful data source for improving your SEO strategy. Paid search campaigns, meanwhile, can also provide examples of keywords that may be unprofitable when bidded on, but are still sound investments for organic search.
Landing pages
PPC campaigns provide unique data on which of a website’s landing pages have the best conversion rates. This not only gives you insight into which copy gives the customer motivation to purchase your product or service, but also which content you should prioritise for targeting specific keywords.
Ad testing
In a similar way, the data collected from split-testing your ads not only improves the conversion rates of your ad campaigns, but also gives an impression of the kinds of copy that entices potential customers to click. This can not only influence your website copy but, more pertinently, the meta descriptions for each of your pages.
Account structure
Great PPC campaigns work alongside your website structure to produce relevant content for the customers you are targeting. Carrying out an analysis of your PPC campaign’s overall budget to understand the most high-value conversions can help you to identify which areas of your business to focus your SEO efforts on, helping to maximise future sales.
Display and remarketing
DIsplay and remarketing campaigns are a great way to improve your ROI within your adwords campaign, but they can also provide data that can benefit your SEO efforts.
Which of your placement websites have the best conversion rates? The answer to this question can be a clear indicator of your target audience. Consider providing content for the best performing sites, or ones of a similar nature. Good relationships with these websites will bring in the same valuable customers, without having to pay for their clicks!
Poor quality scores
While quality scores are affected somewhat by click-through rates, low quality scores can be an indicator of a poor experience for those users searching for your product/service. For those keywords with a low quality score, take a look at your landing page.
Is it relevant and does it provide a useful experience for users searching for your product? If the answer to that question is no, it’s likely your organic rankings will be suffering from similar optimisation issues.
Fighting SEO penalties
These are an unwelcome scenario for any business, either on or offline. If the worst-case scenario happens and you find yourself excluded from Google search results, PPC can come to the rescue and help you retain potential customers that are searching for your product/service.
Click-through rates will take a rapid jump upwards, so you may need a big budget to be able to compete to the same standards. However for a short-term solution, PPC can effectively buy you some time as you fix the penalty issue.
Two sides of the same coin
SEO and PPC are often sold as completely separate packages by digital agencies, but the reality is that they work best when combined into a digital strategy. Much of the same research and analysis between the two overlaps and so it’s important that businesses keep them working together as closely as possible.
Impression is a fully-integrated digital marketing agency. We believe that integrating SEO, PPC and digital PR together is the key to unlocking a business’s full potential.
