You’re probably aware of the benefits both SEO and PPC campaigns can have for your business, but do you understand just how powerful they are when used together? 

Some marketing managers believe targeting keywords using both cannibalises your organic SEO efforts. Instead of allowing your keywords to rank naturally, you’re using paid methods to compete for the same keywords.

However, don’t fall into the trap of thinking you have to pick one or the other. When using both, you can create a mutually beneficial relationship, increasing your search engine results pages (SERPs) opportunities and gathering more data points for future business decisions. Besides creating more brand impressions and opportunities for engagement, the insights that you gain from paid promotions about audience and key words serve as a sort of market research for your organic SEO.

Keep reading to understand how you can integrate SEO and PPC to create successful campaigns for your business.

Search Incrementality 

The concept of search incrementality suggests that combining paid and organic marketing techniques can help your business gain more traffic and, ultimately, sales.

First published by Melissa Mackey in 2009, paid search incrementality - or the 1+1=3 method - states that when using SEO and PPC separately, each provides one visitor to your site. However, when combined and used congruently, SEO and PPC produce a halo effect that provides three visitors to your company’s site. 

Even though paid ads will take some clicks from organic rankings, the two together produce more incremental traffic than using one on its own.

Besides increased traffic and sales, there are other reasons search incrementality could boost your digital marketing efforts. The combination of the two allows you to better define your audience, test content ideas, and qualify leads.

How do SEO and PPC work together?

Reinforces Your Brand Awareness

Using both methods can have a mutually reinforcing effect on the visibility of your brand. By using both PPC and SEO methods to rank for keywords your audience is searching for, your company can show up in the SERPs multiple times.

Paid ads can immediately put your company at the top of the results page, allowing you to purchase more search engine real estate. If you can also rank highly organically, you not only do you bump down the competition but you can increase your opportunities to generate awareness and click throughs to your target pages.

In addition, having your company website listed multiple times in the same SERP reinforces trust with your audience. Potential customers will see your company as an authority on the topic because they trust search engines to provide helpful solutions to their problems.

PPC Is Research, Not Just Marketing

When you create and publish an ad, you see data points trickle in almost immediately. Important information, such as  impressions, views, click-throughs, frequency, and other valuable insights, become available. 

An ad platform, like Google Ads, tracks performance statistics so you can see who is engaging with your content. You can also combine this with platforms like Google Search Console to cross-reference more data. 

In comparison, organic traffic represents a long-term commitment before you see any data.

Considered like this, your PPC ads campaigns can provide a useful supplement to the keyword research tools you use for organic search results. While these tools provide estimates of your performance, they do not pull data straight from the source. 

Having conclusive data can inform your content marketing and SEO targeting decisions. When you understand the demographics, devices, and location of your audience, you can curate content to suit those specific audiences and create a more human-centred approach.

Not only can you pull significant data from your PPC campaigns to use for your content, but you can also test ideas more efficiently. This allows you to create more relevant articles for your audience. 

Test Content Ideas

The more immediate results you receive from paid campaigns allow you to test content ideas more efficiently.

This method acts like a fishing lure to see what makes people bite. You can then invest in an SEO strategy around specific keyword clusters that optimise your content to be found. 

For example, say you wanted to write a complete guide on quarterly accounting practices to promote your products or services. You might have a couple of different businesses in mind when outlining the article. 

You could design and run different ads, taking advantage of paid search targeting capabilities to get them in front of people who match your intended audience. After a few weeks, you will see which ad gets the most responses and engagement, providing data to help you position your article with greater certainty.

By testing your content ideas with short PPC campaigns, you can write more relatable and relevant content. You’ll also provide your audience with more value than your competitors.

Qualify Leads

Along the same lines as testing your content ideas, you can also start to pre-qualify leads using PPC campaigns alongside your organic strategy. 

Even though you define your target audience, you’ll still want to sift out the targets who are potentially most profitable.

You can use PPC campaigns to find out more about your leads. By running a quick test, you can see which type of audience is more likely to convert on the back end.

Running different tests with multiple filters will give your company insights into your ideal or high priority customers. The more data you gather on who engages with your PPC ads, the more defined your audience will be when developing your content.

Increase CTR

Copy is a huge determining factor in whether your ads convert. Knowing exactly the right words that will resonate with the reader is the key to gaining trust and becoming part of your audience’s solution. 

Combining your resources, you can gain valuable insights into the exact phrasing and copy that converts, and filter out all but your most successful writing.

If you’ve run successful ad campaigns, pull the best copy from your ads to inform your organic search strategy. They offer a bank of phrases or words that have successfully affected the actions of your audience.

Consider rewriting your current meta titles or meta descriptions with your successful ad copy and see if your performance improves. 

You can use the same process in reverse. If you have high-ranking articles on search engines or ones that enjoy a high click-through rate on social media, re-purpose the copy. Find the page titles and meta descriptions and use them to inform the copy for your ad campaigns. 

You can also use this method for a little espionage! It’s unlikely a brand would use the same ad repeatedly if it wasn’t still working to convert potential customers. Examine the ad copy from your competitors and see how you can use it as inspiration to create your own tests. 

Retarget Content Readers

One of the most powerful ways you can integrate your PPC and SEO campaigns is with retargeting.

When people visit your site because they’ve found your content on search engines, you can set up tracking to capture their information. These contacts, having an initial level of brand awareness, are warmer than running ads to a completely cold audience.

You can then target them with an ad campaign based on their interest in your site.

This keeps drawing potential leads back to your website so you can continue to develop a relationship with them. Use your copy to acknowledge the article they just read and lead them into the next step in the customer journey. 

Insights Will Guide Better Decisions

By using SEO and PPC together, you are giving yourself more information to help you optimise your strategy.

As you pay to show up for specific keywords using PPC, for example, you might notice your articles are ranking for the same keywords organically.

If you need to make budget decisions, your combined SEO and paid data can help you decide to end paid campaigns where you’re ranking organically. (However, keep in mind that paid search incrementality suggests this will have an adverse effect on an uplift in traffic).

Alternatively, target certain keywords that are too expensive to compete for. You can pivot your content strategy to prioritise ranking for these in your organic search efforts instead. You could also decide to allocate a budget to compete for an expensive keyword in the short term, giving your content a chance to rank organically. 

SEO and PPC Works Together

The more information you give yourself, the better opportunity you have to be successful. Keeping your PPC advertising and SEO strategies integrated will help you gather data, giving you valuable insights on your audience. 

You’ll be able to test different audiences and ideas, optimise to use successful copy across both strategies, and become an authority within your niche.

Need an expert who can ensure you’re using PPC and SEO strategies effectively? Get in touch with us today and we’ll help increase your organic and paid traffic.