PPC and SEO Working Together for Huge Wins – Don’t Give Your Audience Away to the Competition!

We often tell clients that there is no reason for them to choose PPC over SEO or vice versa. In today’s hyper-competitive digital landscape, it pays to leverage every tool to your advantage.

The commonly held view is that PPC is too expensive or complex, while SEO is too slow. We agree that SEO takes time and that PPC has become overly complicated in recent years.

However, that’s not the reason to choose one over the other; in fact, this is all the more reason to use both together. The channels don’t have to be siloed, though they must be both aligned to meet common goals.

When done correctly, PPC and SEO can together take your digital marketing campaign to the next level.

Pay-Per-Click Advertising for Short Term Wins

One of the best things about running PPC ads is that you experience results within a couple of hours. That means if you have a list of keywords that you think should be targeted via an SEO campaign, putting it through a PPC campaign will help you whittle them down to the ones that bring in quality traffic.

Delivering results from SEO efforts can take months, so before you put in all that effort, you might as well run PPC ads. However, since this will cost money, you will want to set a realistic budget and set it so that the ads stop running when your budget runs out.

Then analyse the data from the campaign and your website to see which (keywords) ones are bringing in the most conversions.

PPC Can Help Determine the Best Performing Copy

Each time our SEO team decide to pursue a new keyword, we know it can take months before we see any results worth measuring. However, in the context of that, we also want to make sure that the landing page copy is the best it can be so that once the site is optimised for that keyword, we don’t have a high bounce rate to deal with.

In addition, we also want to make sure that the CTR and engagement are the highest possible. To do this, we run PPC ads across half a dozen landing pages. We run the campaign for a while to see which ads got the most clicks and which landing pages converted the best.

We then use the best-performing landing pages, optimise them for SEO and use the ad copy as the meta description and title. This almost guarantees that once our clients start ranking, they will see higher conversion rates.

We often want to test:

• Title tags, descriptions, and headlines
• Specific keyword angles and variations
• Topics
• Landing page variations
• New product messaging

Dominate the SERPs by Using Both

You’ve probably noticed, but 20% of Google’s SERPs, particularly on the first page, are taken up by ads or PPC ads more appropriately. In some industries, the top 3 spots are taken up by ads. So, even if your website ranks no.1, it is no.4.

Since there is so much clutter in Google’s SERPs, being no. 1 isn’t enough. To truly be no.1, you will need to rule in PPC ads too in other words take up more space in SERPs. This will give you much more real estate, maximising the amount of attention and consequently, clicks.

So, you can use PPC to take up the top spot and then in the SERP, take up spots like:

• Rich snippets
• Knowledge cards
• Google shopping
• Video carousels
• People also ask
• Localised results or GMBs
• Image packs

Now, think about how much more attention you can get if you use this strategy.

 

Help You Find Hidden Keywords From the Buyer’s Journey

 

It is not realistic to think that every keyword, landing page, blog post, and search ad will convert prospects to buyers or leads. In fact, you never want to create content exclusively for lead generation; instead, your focus should be on the niche audience who will be interested in what you are selling.

However, the only way to know what is bringing in the most conversions is when you have enough data to analyse. Unfortunately, SEO is more of a long game, and it will be a while before you have any data. On the other hand, PPC will help reveal what blog posts or landing pages are converting. It will also help you determine what search terms you may not have had initially considered are bringing in qualified leads.

This information can help reinforce your SEO strategy, helping you rank sooner for low competition and high traffic keywords.

Meanwhile, if there is a problem, running PPC ads will help you determine the problem and fix it before it costs you a great deal of time and effort in the SEO department.

 

Use PPC Conversion Data as Part of Your SEO Strategy

One of the benefits of SEO or search engine optimisation is that the longer you keep at it, the more actionable your data. That’s why we align our clients’ SEO strategy with their PPC campaigns; this allows us to grow organic traffic that’s more meaningful instead of just the top funnel visibility.

In other words, PPC can be used to see how top-funnel users are making it to the bottom half before you invest in expensive SEO. For instance, how many people who see your ad on Facebook, after which they search for your brand on Google. Also, in addition to searching for your brand name, what other related terms are they using. For instance, some people may search terms like “Is [your brand] a scam.” Knowing this will help you frame your SEO and blogging strategy.

 

Final Word

PPC and SEO do not have to be mutually exclusive. An impactful and meaningful digital marketing campaign needs to use both for the best results. We work with clients to ensure that their PPC and SEO goals are correctly aligned for maximum ROI.