SEO and PPC Working Together Boosts Clicks and Conversions

When it comes to breaking through the online clutter, it’s not a choice between SEO or PPC anymore. Search Engine Land reports that to acquire ultimate SERP real estate, make your content marketing stick, and receive the best ROI, brands need to focus on “the synergy that SEO and PPC have together.”

• According to new data from Kenshoo, PPC ROI is growing faster than PPC spend year after year in America.
• The Search Agency released new research that shows total spend in paid search increased by 35% in Q1. Bing saw a 60% growth in spend, more than double of Google AdWords 29% spend.
• In the SEMPO State of Search Marketing Report 2013, it was indicated that a majority (over 80%) of brands believed PPC complemented their organic search marketing efforts.

How can marketers take advantage of this search synergy in terms of clicks and conversions? Let’s explore.

Clicks

Google data from 2012 shows that there’s a delicate correlation between organic search rankings and associated paid advertising. The Google study discovered that organic search rankings benefitted from an accompanying ad. According to Search Engine Land, “The study found that 82% of ad clicks are incremental when the associated organic result is ranked between 2 and 4, and 96% of clicks are incremental when the brand’s organic result was 5 or below.” Even if a business thinks they can scale back costs for PPC because they’re ranking well in organic search, studies show that the sum is worth more than the actual individual parts. The ROI from PPC and SEO working together outweighs the cost of PPC alone.

Overall, both SEO and PPC work together to increase visibility and added exposure on search engine results. When one’s not doing well, the other pulls the weight. Internet users who see businesses that appear in both SEO and PPC ads see them as more credible, trusted, and established.

Conversions

Take a look in Google Analytics’ multi-channel funnels report, and you can see that SEO and PPC, together, must be part of a holistic, integrated, digital marketing plan.

Source: Search Engine Land

When a user is searching for your business, they are going through different pathways to get there. The ‘glue’ that holds pieces like SEO, PPC, social media, email marketing together is content. And creating the right content  that users are searching for requires discovering the right keywords.

Keyword data used for PPC campaigns can be also used to fully optimize and test organic search campaigns. This gives a brand double the data to analyze to see what content is working for them and what’s not. With the help of keyword research, a brand has the ability to create a consistent environment for the user and improve their campaigns in the process through testing.

Takeaway

If you’re a marketer would like to see more conversions at a lower cost, note that it’s possible by focusing on connecting PPC and SEO together. SEO and PPC serve different purposes, but when used together, create a synergy that takes your marketing strategy to a whole new leve. However, the requires your PPC and SEO working together to find the right keywords first.