Many large companies today still approach search engine optimisation (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) as two separate digital marketing channels. But with some simple planning, the two can be combined to great effect.
For SEO, one of the hardest things is identifying future SEO targets – it often requires guesswork, since you have to deal with data from too low a test base to be useful.
Meanwhile, any well-formed PPC campaign will involve lots of comparative testing, making PPC data a goldmine of information for SEO practitioners. Indeed, PPC data will throw up terms that are not on the SEO radar, those key-phrases that are driving PPC traffic, but are not ranked in natural listings. These are great SEO keyword opportunities, which should be used to create unique SEO content to drive up natural traffic without impacting PPC budget.
But SEO pages can also seriously improve PPC performance. When looking at analytics data, it is easy to locate those SEO pages that have great conversion rates and re-purpose them into PPC landing pages for those target keywords. The main benefit of finding pages that the search engines already see as naturally relevant to a key-phrase is that it can increase the quality score of the associated ad placement. A higher quality score improves your placement on the paid search rankings and reduces the click-through costs.
It also makes sense that the more your results are spread throughout a results page, the more likely the page is to be clicked on. The bias towards natural results is based on the assumption that the natural results are more relevant to the searchers intent (for some searches such as direct brand-name and financial transactional searches this is less true). However, if you have placements in the sponsored results section and the natural results it means your brand and website is more visible – customer awareness of your site is half the battle, after all.
Being on both paid and natural search results on the same page also means you can address different search audiences at the same time. The paid ad can highlight the latest offer and target transactional searches, while the natural result can target pre-transactional searchers who want information before converting. Matching your message closely to your audience will increase the chances of conversion once they arrive on site.
The bottom line is combining PPC and SEO data, information and strategy can increase traffic on terms by well over 20 per cent, reduce PPC costs, and increase the breadth of audience while also increasing conversion rates when they arrive on site. Many large organisations, who should know better, still treat these as separate entities that don’t talk to each other, as a result companies who combine them will undoubtedly have a competitive edge on those competing websites.
Donal Langan is the senior SEO consultant at digital marketing consultancy Stream:20
