How PPC and SEO Can Work Together

How PPC and SEO Can Work Together

12/12/19 | Adam Prosser

PPC (Pay-Per-Click) and SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) are often seen as two separate, and potentially mutually exclusive options within the sphere of digital marketing. However, when used together they can be exceedingly complementary.

How? Well, utilising SEO and PPC strategies together means that your company can have more visibility in the SERPs, your PPC will have a lower cost per click due to your overall quality score being improved by SEO, and your SEO keyword choices will be better-targeted thanks to the wealth of click-through and conversion data that PPC provides.

Here, we delve into each of these elements so you can make an informed decision on whether PPC and SEO will work well together for your marketing strategy. In part 2, we gve tips on how to improve your PPC and SEO so that they are working together.

 

PPC with SEO Means More Visibility in the SERPs

The Search Engine Results Page (SERPs) is the list of results that are shown when a query is entered into a search engine, such as Google. This usually consists of 10 ‘organic’ links, i.e. links from websites that have ranked through the SEO strategy.

There will usually also be a number of advertised websites at the top and bottom of the SERPs; these positions are paid for by companies, although you only pay if someone clicks on your link. This is the differentiating factor between SEO and PPC – with SEO, you do not have to pay to play.

However, by using both SEO and PPC, you can often find that your website appears in the advert section and then once again in the organic listings. This repetition actually builds trust in users as your brand feels familiar and authoritative. By showing more than once in the SERPs, you are more prominent than your competitors and therefore are seen as more credible to potential consumers. If Google likes you so much, they should too, right?

 

SEO Can Lower Your PPC Cost Per Click

With PPC, your cost per click (CPC) is partly decided using a formula that takes into account the quality of your advert and your website. This is due to Google’s desire to show high quality, relevant results to users. Because of this, high-quality adverts that lead to high-quality websites can pay a lower price to appear above their competitors.

“Even if your competition has higher bids than yours, you can still win a higher position at a lower price by using highly relevant keywords and ads.”
https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/1752122?hl=en-GB

Because a core focus of SEO is to improve your website’s overall quality in the eyes of search engines, SEO will actually have the added benefit of lowering your PPC cost! SEO teams are focusing on the nitty-gritty elements of a website that Google loves, and they’re doing it in a way that PPC rarely has the time, resources, or expertise for.

By ensuring you have an SEO-focused website and optimal PPC advertisements, you’re likely to find you pay less for your advertisements whilst also improving your conversions. That’s right, each click will be worth more to you as it is more likely that the click will convert into a customer. This is because SEO will also improve your customer’s experience on your website – leading to higher conversion rates.

 

PPC Data Helps with SEO Keyword Decisions

PPC is notoriously good for data-gathering. With PPC, your data is far more in-depth and it is also far quicker to come through. But, PPC and SEO both hinge largely on the right keyword choices, so you can use the valuable keyword data from PPC to inform your wider SEO strategy.

For example, let’s say you’re a builder operating in your local area. You offer a free quotation, and you have also won awards for your exceptional customer service. You only have so much space in your page titles (which is what will show on the search results) so which of these do you promote? Which of these two USPs are your potential customers going to be most drawn to, thereby making them click on your website, instead of your competitors’?

With PPC, you can run two adverts at the same time, each talking about one of these USPs. You’ll then quickly gather lots of data about which advert is clicked on more, and which leads to actual conversions on your website.

This valuable information can then inform the SEO keyword decisions, and your SEO team will implement the ‘winning’ USP across the relevant titles, thereby increasing your clicks on your organic SERP listings as well as your PPC adverts.

This also means that those extremely coveted, extremely expensive PPC keywords can instead become part of your SEO strategy. These will be hard to rank for organically but it is possible, so trial it on your PPC first to ensure they will be worth the effort. If they’re converting well, stop spending extortionate amounts on PPC for them and quickly move these to the SEO strategy where the return on investment is far greater.

 

Join us soon for part 2 where we discuss some actionable points you can use to make sure you’re getting the very most out of your search engine marketing efforts.

  

Ready to find out how PPC and SEO could work together for your business? Contact us for your free digital marketing consultation and we’ll visit you to discuss our range of services and what would work best for you.