Oftentimes, entrepreneurs try to decide whether to focus more on SEO marketing or PPC.
The right choice, of course, depends on the business type and the moment. But did you know that using them together can bring huge benefits?
Besides not relying on a single channel and strategy, combining them can improve your outcomes even more and help compensate for the cons of each one.
In this post, we’ll show you five different ways that this happens.
What’s the difference between SEO and PPC?
SEO Marketing, or Search Engine Optimisation, refers to the strategies you use to make your site rank high on search engines and other platforms organically.
Besides attracting visitors for free, ranking high on search engines also positions your brand as an authority in your industry.
The biggest downside is that it takes a lot of time and work to reach high positions. And, even when you do, there’s no guarantee that you’re gonna stay there for long.
Pay-per-click campaigns, on the other hand, consist of paying for ads to attract visitors on search engines, social media platforms, and other ad networks.
One of the pros of paid search is the control you get over who and how many people are seeing your ads and how much you’re spending. Other upsides include getting instant effects and having your ads prioritised over organic results.
The obvious downside is the cost. Besides, paid advertising works based on an auction. This means that you’re always competing against other businesses willing to spend more per click.
5 ways that SEO and PPC complement each other
Way #1: Increase brand awareness
The more times someone is exposed to your brand, the more likely they are to visit your site and make a purchase.
Combining SEO marketing and PPC means you’ll appear on search engines more often than ever. This will increase brand awareness and your click-through rates (CTR) on both your paid ads and organic results.
Besides translating into more visitors immediately, a higher CTR will also tell Google that your site is more relevant, increasing its organic ranking and making your ads cheaper, as we’ll see.
Way #2: Boost remarketing campaigns
While search engine optimisation can be an incredible way to generate leads, converting them is a different story.
Since most buyers need time to make up their minds before making a purchase, your digital marketing strategy should also include ways of exposing your brand to them more times during that period.
One of the best ways to do that and increase conversions among organic visitors is through remarketing campaigns, in which your ads are targeted at those who’ve already interacted with your brand.
By having a solid SEO marketing strategy in place to generate leads for free and retargeting them on a PPC campaign aimed only at those who’ve already shown interest in your brand, you’ll develop an extremely powerful customer acquisition process with an excellent ROI.
Way #3: Identify the best keywords faster
One of the most basic and crucial parts of SEO marketing is adding to your site and content the keywords you wish to rank for.
And, while keyword research tools allow you to learn a keyword’s search volume and competition level easily, that’s not enough to predict how well it’ll work specifically for your funnel.
There’s always the chance of optimising your whole site for a keyword that seemed promising, only to find out that the leads that come from it aren’t your ideal ones.
Paid ads allow you to experiment quickly with different keywords to learn which ones bring leads that are more likely to buy from you in the end.
Once you know that, you’ll be able to optimise your site a lot more confidently, knowing that it’ll attract the right visitors.
Way #4: Get better content ideas
As with keywords, you want your content marketing strategy to include topics that attract the right leads.
A great way to identify those topics is by running campaigns on the Google Display Network, which gets your ads displayed on Google’s partner sites.
By browsing analytics data, you’ll be able to find out which content works best with your products or services.
Let’s say you’re selling travel insurance and notice your ads are getting a higher CTR on articles listing the best cities for digital nomads. You’ll then know that creating a similar post in your blog will eventually bring you high-quality leads.
Way #5: Get more results from your SEO efforts
A common misconception is that SEO marketing strategies are only useful for organic search. That’s not true, as Google aims to bring the most relevant results for its users and reward the most relevant sites both on organic search and paid ads.
That’s why it’s implemented the Quality Score, which rates the quality and relevance of your keywords and paid ads. By getting a higher score, Google will prioritize your ads over others, allowing you to pay less for them and reach higher positions more easily.
In the past, you were able to save up to 50% or pay up to 400% extra over Google’s benchmark for your keyword, depending on your score. While those numbers aren’t right anymore, your site’s quality score still affects your PPC results.
Many of the SEO marketing strategies used to make a site rank higher, like increasing its performance and optimising it for keywords, will also affect its quality score.
Therefore, implementing search engine optimisation strategies on your site will not only bring more organic traffic but will also drop the cost of your PPC campaigns.
Don’t forget too that you can’t do all this in a vacuum. In order to understand the effects of what you are doing, make sure you are tracking and using the correct Google Analytics 4 framework on your website.
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