Drive More Traffic & Customers By Getting PPC and SEO Working Together
Despite being a specialist PPC agency – we’re aware of the benefits of SEO, and how getting PPC and SEO working together can help drive growth. Adam Foster, Director of Proper Mint Marketing and SEO expert, talks more about the importance of combining the two digital marketing strategies…
If you ever want to see magic unfolding in front of your eyes, look for brands that have PPC and SEO working together. When implemented correctly, a focused approach to marketing that combines SEO and PPC allows brands to dominate the SERPs (search engine results pages).
This means more clicks, more traffic, more customers – and most importantly – more money.
Sometimes, marketers and business owners get confused about which channel they should be focusing on. They think “seo doesn’t work for us”, or hear that PPC is too expensive, and instead of looking at how to combine efforts, think it’s a case of SEO vs PPC… not SEO AND PPC.
BUT!
The brands that do use both and align their SEO and PPC efforts are rewarded with magical insights, data and learnings that will supercharge their business growth.
And that’s what we’re looking at today. We’re debunking the notion of PPC vs SEO and instead sharing some insights as to how PPC and SEO working together can take your business to the next level.
What is the difference between SEO and PPC?
Traffic type
The biggest difference between PPC and SEO is that SEO delivers organic traffic, while PPC delivers paid-for traffic.
Advertisers pay for every person who clicks on your PPC ad. This means if you lower your budget, you will receive less traffic. If you turn a PPC campaign off, you will completely cut off that source of traffic.
Clicks and visitors from SEO are “free” – meaning you do not pay each time someone clicks. There is no budget to turn on and off with SEO, and if your website is ranking organically, through the results of SEO activity, you will continue to receive traffic.
No such thing as “free”
To call SEO traffic “free” is misleading however. With PPC – you have an ad budget. So you decide what you’re spending. With SEO, there is no budget of this kind.
However, in order to optimise a website, produce content around relevant keywords & topics, and carry out digital PR, you need to invest the labour time into this. Whether this is through in-house staff, or outsourced to an agency, people need to physically carry out this work – and that work isn’t free.
The cost’s with SEO aren’t an ad budget you turn on and off, but a labour cost of having experts create and implement a plan.
Another key benefit to SEO is that when your website is ranking – you will consistently receive traffic. This could be the result of some SEO activity carried out years ago that will continue to attract traffic to your website, without an on-going cost.
Time
PPC delivers fast traffic. As soon as your ads are live, potential prospects will see your advertisements when they search for keywords that trigger them. Think of PPC as turning a tap on and off. When you turn a PPC campaign on – you get traffic. When you turn PPC off, you stop getting traffic.
SEO should be seen as an investment, not an immediate win. In a study carried out by Ahrefs, they determined 3-6 months is the most common timeframe to see results from SEO activity.
The Benefits of PPC and SEO Working Together
For the most effective and fastest business growth, the absolute best option is to have PPC and SEO working together.
These two channels don’t work against each other. They help each other. Here’s how.
Maximise ROI
By combining PPC and SEO your business can maximise the investment of marketing activities by boosting the performance of each.
For example, SEO tactics can inform PPC strategies – such as landing page optimisation which will help improve quality score of ads and conversion rate.
PPC activity such as keyword research and insights can help guide SEO activity and provide more accurate keyword data..
Alignment across marketing departments
By utilising both PPC and SEO, you will align your marketing department (whether in house or outsourced) to work more effectively by sharing this data. This will help all activity work towards common goals, as opposed to in isolation.
SEO can be implemented – not at the detriment of PPC and vice versa.
Stabilise fluctuations in rankings
SEO rankings can fluctuate for a number of reasons. Competition, Google updates, loss of backlinks etc. Utilising both SEO and PPC at the same time allows you to stabilise traffic by investing in the areas where SEO may have dropped, and pulling back spend on areas where SEO is doing really well.
Combat seasonality
In a similar thread, some fluctuations can be based on a reduction in seasonal demand. An integrated approach to SEO and PPC can identify seasonal demand quicker and reduce its impact by keeping your brand visible even during quieter seasons.
Why should you prioritise PPC and SEO working together?
Combining SEO and PPC provides better exposure online, by capturing more real estate on a SERP (search engine results page) and in turn, improving your click through rate. This will increase website traffic and help establish a stronger and more trusted brand presence in the market.
Here are some of the ways that you can get PPC and SEO working together.
How do you use SEO and PPC together?
Here is how top brands use PPC and SEO to compliment each other.
1 – Keyword targeting
PPC and SEO strategies both aim to improve brand visibility by targeting relevant keywords. They rely on thorough keyword research to identify high-demand search terms that align with your brand.
The integration of PPC and SEO offers the opportunity to enhance keyword research by leveraging valuable insights. By combining the two, you gain a deeper understanding of audience search behaviour, top-performing keywords, and conversions.
In this context, PPC insights prove particularly valuable due to their swift outcomes. Analysing keyword conversion data allows you to identify the specific keywords that drive leads—a feature absent in organic analytics. These PPC-derived keywords can then be strategically incorporated into your SEO campaign.
The immediate results provided by PPC also prove advantageous when testing keyword effectiveness. Since SEO requires time to yield results, PPC insights help expedite this process and reduce the need for trial and error.
2 – Maximise SERP Real Estate to improve CTR
Search engines results pages are constantly changing. Where ads are placed, how many ads are placed, featured snippets, site links. The list goes on.
PPC ads usually appear at the top of a Google SERP, with organic listings below it. Other paid ads such as Google Shopping can also appear at the top of a page.
Organic listings will come under PPC results and can feature local results, a map pack, Google Business Profiles, featured snippets and websites.
What remains the same is that the websites that occupy most of the SERP will have the highest click through rates.
By having a presence in both organic and paid results you are visible to those who ignore PPC results, as well as those who do click through on PPC ads.
If you have a strong organic presence, you may even appear more than once on the first page without scrolling – maximising your chance to get a click.
3 – Use high converting ad copy as meta data to improve CTR
Understanding the messaging that resonates most effectively with your target audience is like having a super power. And PPC allows us to see exactly which ad copy resonates best with our target audience.
These valuable insights then become a valuable resource for an SEO team, guiding them in creating compelling content that speaks directly to our audience.
Likewise – if parts of a website are performing really well in SEO, we can leverage that data to use when writing ad copy.
By harnessing the combined power of PPC and SEO, you can nail down the best performing copy for ads and meta data, to maximise your click through rate.
4 – Optimise landing pages to reduce cost per click
One of the key components of SEO is optimising web pages for keywords and user experience.
By unifying SEO and PPC, you can optimise landing pages for specific keywords and to provide the best UX possible.
This will improve your quality score, conversions, and overall ROI.
5 – Optimise ad budget and cost per lead
Every business has those keywords that have a high cost per click, and low conversion rate. You almost feel obliged to bid on these because you’re still getting leads – even if they’re not as cheap as you’d like.
By identifying these keywords, and focusing SEO efforts to ensure you rank for them, you can reduce your ad spend on these words, and rely on the “free” traffic from SEO.
You can then allocate this budget to other areas, or lower your overall spend.
6 – Build brand trust
People buy from brands they trust, and brand awareness can be built through both PPC and SEO efforts.
If a prospect sees you in both organic and paid positions, you are going to instil more confidence in that prospect.
By appearing in both SEO and PPC results, you are also going to be seen more by prospects, which also helps to build a level of familiarity, as well as curiosity for someone to check your site out.
What are the similarities between SEO and PPC?
Both PPC and SEO require keyword research, in order to identify the relevant search terms to target. Understanding which search terms are relevant to your business, their intent, and search volume is crucial to attracting relevant traffic.
Another similarity is where SEO and PPC results display, Google search results pages, and how they display. Organic lists and PPC ads must both be optimised and written in a way to catch a users attention and to entice them to click that specific listing.
While SEO and PPC differ in their execution and cost structure, their shared emphasis on keywords, audience targeting, performance tracking, optimization, user experience, and search engine influence make them complementary components of a well-rounded digital marketing strategy.
Take your business to the next level with a combined PPC and SEO strategy
In an ideal world, you would have PPC and SEO working together to make sure you’re covering all bases.
However, in the “real world” we understand not all businesses have the resources to do this. If you wondering about how we can help you combine SEO and PPC to maximise your ROI most effectively, get in touch with Circus PPC Agency for PPC expertise, and Adam Foster at Proper Mint Marketing for SEO expertise.
