SEO & PPC: Pillars of Search Marketing Success

SEO & PPC: Pillars of Search Marketing Success

Placement at or near the top of Google’s Search Engine Results Page (SERP) is the name of the game in Search Marketing. In today’s competitive online marketplace, it’s not easy to achieve that level of visibility without implementing and coordinating comprehensive Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Paid Advertising (PPC) strategies. When used together, SEO and PPC are a powerful combination that can help organizations advance their marketing strategy as follows: 

  • Increase website traffic: SEO can help a website rank higher in the SERP, which can lead to more organic traffic over time. PPC helps drive traffic to a website immediately by placing ads in front of targeted potential customers who are actively searching for relevant products or services.
  • Improve brand awareness: SEO and Paid Ads can help raise a brand's profile through greater visibility on the SERP from a combination of highly ranked organic AND ‘sponsored’ listings.
  • Generate leads and sales: SEO generates leads by attracting potential customers to a website as its visibility steadily increases on the SERP. PPC is a good way to quickly generate qualified leads and sales by targeting users who demonstrate buying intent.
  • Increase conversions: SEO can help increase conversions by making it easier for potential customers to find and understand a website's products or services. PPC serves a similar function by placing targeted ads in front of people who are most likely to be interested in what a business has to offer.

SEO: A Quick Summary

Comprehensive website SEO entails a multi-faceted effort that includes on-page, off-page, and technical optimization. For this discussion we will focus specifically on on-page content development and keyword optimization. 

Having some understanding of how SEO works is helpful for managing your expectations of its value. It’s typically not a quick fix that will suddenly boost your website’s visibility, but if implemented properly, SEO’s effects will gain traction over time and provide lasting competitive benefits. While it requires an up-front investment of time and effort, it can return long-term dividends in the form of ongoing qualified customer traffic and increased sales.

On-Page SEO entails crafting compelling keyword-optimized content. This requires skill and a deep understanding of search engines’ algorithms, which have evolved to elevate engaging high-quality content that answers users’ queries. Carefully selected targeted keywords make up the foundation of this quality content, as we discuss below.

An Overview of PPC Advertising

For marketers willing to pay for each click, PPC can be a very effective way to reach a large audience quickly, and can be used to pinpoint specific user demographics and interests. 

Paid Search Specialists strategically design Google ads to appear on the SERP in response to specific user queries. While advertisers can implement various types of Google Ads PPC campaigns, traditional keyword-based search (text) ads continue to be a mainstay of a comprehensive PPC strategy. Search ads are a good vehicle for targeting users mid- to late-journey in the sales funnel and, as a result, typically have higher conversion rates than some other types of ads.

PPC vs. SEO

The advantages of PPC over SEO include:

  • A high volume of immediate traffic—with the right budget
  • Control: PPC offers an ecommerce owner the ability to deliver a message tailored to the target audience directly on the SERP, resulting in higher conversion rates. Ad spend is a lever advertisers can pull to achieve higher rankings on the SERP.
  • Flexibility: PPC campaigns can be adjusted quickly and easily for changing market conditions

SEO offers certain advantages over PPC:

  • Provides long-term benefits in the form of greater visibility, leading to increased website traffic and brand allegiance, but requires minimal additional investment
  • Effective SEO can reduce the need for PPC spend over time

While each of these marketing channels involves distinct tactics and timeline planning, they share a common vital element that enables search engines to match specific user queries to your website content: target keywords. Identifying the most effective keywords to facilitate that match and help meet your business objectives requires careful thought and research. Here are some expert tips to help you get started. 

Identify Relevant Target Keywords for SEO and PPC

There are various tools available, including Google’s keyword planner, Semrush, and Moz, to help you research and select targeted keywords for your SEO and PPC campaigns. Deploying similar or related keywords in both your paid and organic campaigns allows you to more effectively reach your target audience. The ultimate goal for a marketer is to “own” the top of the SERP real estate with highly ranked paid and organic listings for targeted keywords.

While PPC and SEO keywords can overlap, they don't need to be exactly the same. Here's a breakdown of the key differences and why these terms might not be identical:

Goals:

PPC: Drive immediate traffic and conversions

SEO: Increase organic visibility and brand awareness in the long term

Intent:

PPC: Targets users with clear buying intent or high-value search terms

SEO: Covers a broader spectrum of user queries, including informational keywords

Match types:

PPC: Offers various keyword match types like broad, phrase, and exact to control ad visibility

SEO: Focuses on incorporating keywords naturally within website content

In choosing keywords for your campaigns, your first instinct might be to compile a list of broad terms that relate to your business’ product line. That’s a good first step to help you get organized, but seed keywords like “shoes,” “comforters,” or “shrubs” are not entirely effective vehicles on their own for improving your online visibility. While these head terms have a lot of search demand, they also have an insane amount of competition from big, established players, like Amazon. That means for SEO, your chance of ranking prominently for these keywords can be slim to none. And for PPC, those keywords are likely to be expensive.

Use Long-Tail Keywords To Satisfy Search Intent

Instead of just chasing broad terms, identify “long-tail keywords” that satisfy your target audience’s search intent. So, for example, rather than using only a term like “jacket,” implement more descriptive phrases like “waterproof rain jacket for women.” In this way, you can target a more specific, qualified audience that’s more engaged and likely to convert—in either your paid or organic channel. Organize your list of ‘buyer intent keywords’ into categories to facilitate both SEO and PPC Campaign set-up.

Use SEO and PPC Together To Achieve Success

Here are some best practices for using targeted keywords in your SEO and PPC campaigns:

  • Target the same or similar keywords: Use the same keywords in your SEO and PPC campaigns to ensure you are targeting the same audience. This will help you to maximize your reach and avoid wasting money on irrelevant clicks.
  • Use SEO to improve PPC ad quality: Use your SEO knowledge to improve the quality of your PPC ads. This can help you to write more effective ad copy with a higher clickthrough rate.

Keyword-Optimized Landing Pages for SEO and PPC

SEO best practices calls for purpose-built landing pages on your website to be optimized for a specific primary keyword/key phrase, along with related secondary keywords. This makes it crystal clear to the search engines what the page is all about, which will help elevate page rankings. So, for example, an ecommerce category page for Peonies will primarily contain keyword-optimized content related solely to Peony plants, not Roses or Daffodils, or some other garden flower. 

In a similar vein, each PPC ad should link to a dedicated landing page optimized specifically for the keyword(s) driving the campaign. In other words, using the example above, ads for Peony plants should typically link to the same search-optimized ecommerce category page. Obvious exceptions to this practice would relate to special promotions, sales, etc., which should instead link to a different (and maybe temporary or seasonal), custom landing page. 

Search Marketing Performance Tracking

Having optimized your website for search engines and implemented related PPC campaigns, it’s critical that you track your results in both channels so you can measure the return on your investment. This will help you to make adjustments to your campaigns as needed and help you avoid cannibalization between the channels going forward.

These are some key steps a marketing team should take for tracking and evaluating SEO and PPC coordinated campaigns:

1. Specify important metrics – Define Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) upfront, like ROI, CPA, CVR, CTR, leads, sales, etc., to determine campaign success.

2. Dedicated Call-to-Action (CTA) – Assign unique phone number and/or UTM campaign parameters so you can identify each channel's contributions.

3. Traffic source analysis – Evaluate organic traffic versus paid, review trends, and assess cannibalization risks and new opportunities. Review impression share performance.

4. Keyword performance – Break down rankings, click-through rates, costs, conversions, and revenue by shared keywords sets to evaluate effectiveness and adjust strategies. 

5. Landing page insights – Analyze bounce rates, time on site, and pages per session from landing pages for both channels, using GA4 or other analytics tools. Identify issues.

6. Attribution modeling – Review conversion paths across channels. Give credit to PPC or SEO appropriately. Tweak campaigns per attribution insights. 

7. Competitor monitoring – Use tools like Semrush to monitor competitors' activities in both SEO and PPC, and respond accordingly. 

8. Campaign schedule analysis – Assess performance during times the campaigns are paused/altered. Identify campaign scheduling optimization needs.

9. Regular reconciliation – Conduct quarterly overview analysis across channels. Provide optimization recommendations.

Ensuring close, data-focused coordination between SEO and PPC prevents redundant efforts and maximizes the strengths of both channels, resulting in an improved combined return. 

To learn more, or to have our team of experienced SEO and PPC specialists help you get started, please contact us today.

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