Digital marketing can take many forms, but for it to work at its best, your approach needs to be coherent and optimised. So, how do you do that? Well, search engine optimisation (SEO) and pay per click (PPC) are two different approaches to digital marketing that work well together and often form the basis of the most successful digital marketing campaigns, but knowing how to use them together is key.
In this article, we’re going to explore SEO and PPC in more detail and explain how, when used correctly, they can supercharge your marketing efforts.
Do SEO and PPC work together?
First thing’s first: do SEO and PPC work together? Though they are two separate things and perform differently from each other, they work incredibly well together and complement each other beautifully. In fact, it can be argued that either approach alone will likely not yield the same level of success as if the two were paired together.
If you’re just starting out with digital marketing and don’t have a massive budget, SEO should be your primary focus as organic results often drive more traffic and evoke more trust from users. For the most part, a lot of SEO work can be done without needing a budget, making it a first port of call for every business looking to climb the search results ladder. Think of things like blog posts and good landing page copy.
On the other hand, if you have more money to play with, or if you find that you’re doing well organically as a result of SEO and want to double down on your efforts, you may benefit from implementing a PPC campaign. PPC entails creating Google ads for which you’ll be charged every time a user clicks on one. Ads sit above organic search results, so getting a top three PPC ad placement is a great way to boost brand awareness.
The way SEO and PPC work together is that your PPC results can be backed up by organic results, and the two strategies can inform each other if one approach seems to be doing particularly well. That being said, what else can be gained from optimising your strategy using PPC and SEO?
Save money
First and foremost, you can save money by properly integrating SEO and PPC. PPC alone costs money. If you have an eCommerce business, you will likely see a return on ad spend (ROAS), but for B2B businesses or businesses selling high ticket items, PPC might not be quite as profitable by itself. This is where organic SEO plays a role. Supporting content that ranks highly on Google is deemed more trustworthy by users, and it doesn’t cost anything to get there. Therefore, merging both can be budget-effective.
Be more time efficient
Ranking organically through SEO is a long ball game and can take weeks or even months. In the mean time, PPC can be a good filler and get immediate results to carry you through until Google indexes your SEO content and decides how to rank you.
Have more control
PPC is somewhat more controlled as you select the keywords you want to use for each ad. On the other hand, SEO is somewhat of a gamble. Sure enough, you can choose the keywords you want to include, but you may find you rank for others you hadn’t anticipated. Combining the precision of PPC with the coverage of SEO can give you more control over your wider campaign and ensure you touch all bases.
Improve reputation and authority
As mentioned earlier, whilst PPC ads are positioned at the very top of SERPs, a lot of users trust organic results more because they haven’t paid to be there – they’re there by merit. Combining the two is a good way to show you have authority and can be trusted.
How to integrate SEO and PPC
This is all very well, but how exactly are SEO and PPC integrated? Whilst they take on two different forms, there is quite a bit of overlap between them, meaning it’s not as hard as you might think to optimise your digital marketing strategy using both approaches.
Keyword strategy
First is a keyword strategy. If you’re keen to rank for specific keywords, it’s a good idea to include the same clusters in your PPC and SEO campaigns. Whilst both will require different strategies overall, keywords can be taken and shared between the two.
Title tags
If you notice a specific title tag is generating a lot of clicks, either from PPC or organic SEO, this is a good sign that users are engaging with it. With this in mind, you can use title tags between both campaigns.
On-page copy
Content and copy is a huge deciding factor on whether something will rank, and this goes for both SEO and PPC. If you have more of an SEO background, you should find that writing Google ad copy isn’t quite as difficult as you first thought. Again, similar themes can be shared.
Summary
Combining SEO with PPC will give your business the best chance at success. Uniformity across all channels reaffirms your brand identity and helps you to establish a web presence. Optimising your marketing strategy using the SEO and PPC tips above stands you in good stead, but if you’re unsure where to start with either, specialist digital marketing agencies can devise comprehensive strategies to get you started.
