When SEO & PPC Work Together, Anything Is Possible

StartFragmentYou invest in your SEO, and know that great content can make your brand soar through the search engine results and right into your customers’ hearts. You invest in PPC, to ensure that your brand is never hiding from those who are directly searching for a specific product you offer. However, if you’re like most brands, you haven’t thought to combine the two, and their respective strategies have very little or no coordination. But why not?

I’ve often heard entrepreneurs, business owners and mid-level managers wonder aloud if they should focus more on SEO or PPC, as if the two were completely separate. Given that they show up in the same situations, however, this seems borderline nonsensical - especially as PPC ads become more integrated into the total user experience on social media as well as search engine results.

The best thing you can do for your total online marketing plan is to integrate SEO and PPC. This means that as your SEO improves you’ll be able to lower your bid for the PPC ads you run for the same keywords. Because SEO is a long term, stable investment, marrying it to the instant but fleeting success that properly done PPC can bring only makes sense. Think of PPC as the tinder for the log of pine that is SEO - together, your online marketing will burn brighter than ever before, faster than you could hope.

Here’s how to get started:

Step #1 Determine How SEO And PPC Successes Will Affect Each Other

This is going to come down to a math equation. The goal here is to find the ideal ratio numbers that will indicate when to lower your bids on PPC campaigns as SEO campaigns come to fruition. Additionally, this equation will indicate how and when to use PPC campaigns to boost overall success of burgeoning or struggling SEO campaigns. By constantly recalculating this number, you’ll know you’re investing exactly the right amount in each.

If forming a calculation seems a bit too in the weeds, this can also be done manually, though the results will be less exact. Continuously (at least every few days) check where your sites are landing in search engine results, and as they rise, bid lower on your PPC ads.

Step #2 Unify

In order for this team to work, they have to be unified in their efforts, strategy and reporting.

Messaging will be a major factor in the success of your Make sure that your brand messaging is consistent in both campaigns, while also having SEO and PPC campaigns work together towards common goals. For example, if you’re pushing out content about an upcoming season in your industry, focus a PPC campaign on a more specific aspect of it - perhaps your own upcoming sale.

Additionally, make sure that you unify your reporting, so that you can easily compare how the two are working together. Start with a unified goal; a common one is a combined ROI. You can use tools like Google Analytics to view how your SEO content is doing in comparison to your PPC spending and click through rate (CTR).

Step #3 Apply Findings From Each To The Other

As you harmonise PPC and SEO, you’ll notice that they each inform the other. Topics that do well with SEO strategies will inspire the best PPC headlines and text. PPC keywords that are instant hits will give you ideas as to the content you should be focusing on, saving you time and money by cutting down on articles that fall flat.

Combine these two titans of online marketing to not only gain better insight into your own brand and what your customers want, but also to jumpstart each campaign! Reach out today to get started with combining your SEO and PPC efforts - we’re always here to help.

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