7 Ways PPC & SEO Work Better Together To Boost ROI
Online marketing has become the ultimate tool for brands to grow their business in today’s digital era. From connecting with the right global audience to gaining insight to improve customer experience, internet marketing offers a plethora of benefits. As you may already know, you can use a wide variety of digital marketing techniques to grow their business. However, only the right strategies that suit the needs of your business will help you gain profitable results.
Talking about digital marketing techniques, most of us approach it as individual strategies, whether it is SEO, content marketing, or SMO. While each of them is different in many ways, they can yield better results if used together.
Yes, you heard that right.
You can implement them together to gain higher positive outcomes.
Until now, you must’ve read or heard about experts using these techniques separately and how one is more beneficial over the other. What many don’t talk about is how these techniques, when used together, can prove to be more advantageous.
In this blog today, we will be discussing how two digital marketing techniques, SEO and PPC to be precise, work exceptionally together and deliver profitable opportunities for businesses.
First, let’s look at them individually.
What Is Search Engine Optimisation?
Search engine optimisation or SEO is the method of optimising your online content to ensure it ranks high in the search engine results. It is the process of growing the higher organic traffic to your website by increasing its visibility in the various search engines. SEO uses specific keywords that attract a user to the company.
SEO is a vast topic. But there are a few aspects you need to prioritise – the backlinks, sitemap, and H1. Backlinks which search engines like Google use as a ranking signal. It also helps them believe that your content is noteworthy. Better the backlink quality, higher is your site’s rank and its visibility in SERPs. A sitemap is another fundamental piece of your website’s SEO strategy. It helps search engines navigate your website. A sitemap also lets search engines know that your site is available and can be crawled by them. Just by including an H1 tag on your webpages, you increase the chance of your website ranking better. H1 tags are essential for SEO as they tell both search engines as well as website visitors about the content of webpages.
Pros:
- Free to implement
- Secures excellent online presence
- Provides targeted exposure
- High rates of conversion
- Builds trust
Cons:
- Requires longer time to generate ROI
- You need to understand HTML
- Highly competitive
What Is Pay-Per-Click?
This form of internet marketing technique is pretty much what it sounds like – you pay a fee for your ads based on the number of clicks it receives. Pay-per-click or PPC is an incredible way to improve your online visibility and promote products or services. You choose the ad, its budget, as well as demographic and then run it on a wide variety of platforms like Google, Facebook, Instagram, etc.
When it comes to PPC, there are a few factors you must consider. The factors which you cannot overlook include finding the best target keywords, designing a unique and mobile-first landing page, creating multiple ad groups, and optimising your ads. Also, let’s not forget, A/B testing. It helps you run one of your PPC ads to a specific portion of your target audience and the other one to the rest. By doing this, you can make a direct comparison of which ad worked better with your audience.
Pros:
- Immediate visibility
- Audience customisation
- Budget control
- Can track the results
- Targeted reach
Cons:
- No longevity
- Ongoing expense
- You pay for each click
SEO and PPC
Now let’s talk about the remarkable combination of SEO and PPC. These are the two digital marketing strategies that complements each other. You can even think of them as being two sides of the same coin, i.e. Search. Over the years, we’ve noticed that SEO and PPC, when used together, you can achieve better results across the board, including making your overall marketing plans better.
From improving website ranking to increasing lead generation, brand visibility, and ROI, a combination of SEO and PPC offers numerous benefits. Both SEO and PPC share a few similar features. And in several cases, both perform best when combined and strategically aligned.
So, that was about SEO, PPC and both together.
Now, let’s look at the various ways SEO and PPC yield more beneficial results when used together.
7 Ways SEO And PPC Deliver Better Results When Used Together
Keyword research
Keyword research is the cornerstone for both PPC and SEO to deliver positive results. Typically, marketers use keyword research tools like Google Ads Keyword Planner to find the most appropriate keywords for their business. Although this is an excellent way to discover keywords that help your website rank high in the search engine results, you can find new and unique keywords by simultaneously running organic as well as PPC campaigns. It will also help you determine keywords which have high conversion rates, making it easier for you to optimise your overall content using that keyword.
Let’s take a tech startup as an example. Since the competition in this niche is high, one may find it challenging to reach their audience or even rank in the search engine results. But with the help of SEO and PPC together, you can find the most suitable keywords from the user’s search query and use it in the exact or close variant forms. Also, through the search strings where the target phrase appears as it is, you can get additional words.
Gain Increased Visibility
Implementing SEO and PPC together will most definitely improve your visibility and ranking in the search engine results pages (SERPs). Often, brands get tempted to lessen their PPC efforts once the search term or keyword ranks top on the SERP. However, the top two or three results on most SERPs are pay-per-click ads. Never forget this fact. By conquering both organic and paid search results, you can surely increase website traffic as well as establish a positive online presence.
Improve Quality Score
The quality score of a campaign is critical for any business. It not only impacts the cost-per-click of the keyword(s) but helps in deciding the position of your ad in the SERPs. The quality score comprises of the landing page experience, the ad relevance, and clickthrough rates. Since SEO already uses relevant keywords to optimise the landing page, it also helps with the ad. It ensures the keywords are in harmony with the ad and its ad group.
Control Negative PR
You may, at times, get some negative review or rating. It’s inevitable. And when you do get them, your combined PPC and SEO efforts can be an excellent way to control it. The principle here is similar to visibility. By keeping a check on your SEO and PPC results for a particular term, you will be able to guide the conversation more effectively.
The Gulf oil spill is a superb example of using PPC and SEO to combat negative PR. A few months after the BP Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, the company purchased PPC ads linked to a specific keyword – Oil Spill. This PPC ad directed the users to a page on the official BP site which spoke about the clean-up effort. The company wanted to ensure that whenever anyone searched for the term “oil spill”, the first result they saw was their PPC ad.
Recover Missed Search Engine Clicks
Several marketers are under the false notion that if their webpage or website ranks #1 on SERPs, they need not spend or even consider PPC ads. If you are one of them or have a team who thinks PPC is not required, then you may already be losing out on a significant share of your website traffic to your competitors.
According to a study by Google, search ads drive 89% incremental traffic. And this percentage of traffic is not recovered if you pause the PPC ad. Meaning, even if your website ranks #1 on the SERPs, it is always better to implement SEO and PPC together to reach a more extensive range of target audience. Otherwise, you may end up losing them.
Improve Organic Content Strategy Using The Best Performing PPC Ad Copy
PPC and SEO can be closely associated. What works for the former often works well for the later as well. So if you want a specific page to rank organically, you can determine the target keyword and content from the PPC ad that generates the most conversions. The best part of leveraging PPC ads to test your webpage properties is that it delivers instant results. You will know what exactly works for your business and create the meta title tags, meta descriptions accordingly to improve organic traffic.
Test New Keywords And Make Smarter Decision
As we’ve mentioned before, SEO requires a considerable amount of time and research to gain positive outcomes. Fortunately, through PPC ads, you can check the success rate of a keyword for SEO. All you have to do is take a relevant keyword that you think may achieve high ranking and buy the PPC ad for it. Monitor the keyword over time. If it performs well, then start optimising your website for that particular keyword. By doing this, you can find the most relevant keywords for your website in a cost-effective way.
PPC and SEO, when implemented together, provides a comprehensive source of data to ease your decision-making. As you can determine the most effective keywords for your business, it helps improve clickthrough rates, lead generation, conversions, and reduce bounce rates. And this, in turn, helps you in making smarter decisions regarding your future marketing strategies.
Boost Your ROI With The Help Of SEO And PPC
Search engine optimisation and pay-per-click offer a plethora of benefits separately. But when implemented together, its advantages are doubled. The engine of great search marketing strategies run through the data one can gather. And through SEO and PPC, you can gain concrete data that helps obtain in-depth insight into the approaches that are working and the ones which are not. It also enables marketers to understand the more effective ways to reach their target consumers as well as establish future goals for business growth.
Want To Take Advantage Of These PPC and SEO Opportunities But Don’t Know How To Start?
We can help!
We are a seasoned digital marketing firm based in India, working with brands worldwide. We can design a custom SEO and PPC strategy for your business to enhance your website visibility, improve quality score, use new effective keywords, and boost ROI.
Our team of marketers have been in the industry for over a decade and specialise in SEO, content marketing, PPC, SMO, online reputation management, etc. We offer 360-degree digital marketing solutions that help establish a positive online presence for your brand. Not just that. By using the latest as well as effective strategies and techniques, we help boost the growth of your business.
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