Why Should You Do SEO and PPC?
For years, there has been a debate on whether to use SEO or PPC. Which is the superior option: simply using a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign to buy your way to the top of the search engines or using search engine optimization (SEO) to develop your organic search engine marketing strategy?
Most business owners find it difficult to decide where their digital marketing budgets should be spent, leaving them unsure of which approach is the best. Is it possible that it’s a combination of the two?
If you want to learn how to combine these two marketing approaches to improve your website and get better results, keep reading! It’s crucial to understand how to learn SEO and PPC. This article will examine how SEO and PPC interact and influence one another and some best practices for making the most of SEO and PPC synergy.
What Is PPC and SEO Marketing?
Before we dive into integrating SEO and PPC strategies, let’s first examine how each of them works.
What Is SEO?
SEO is sometimes known as “natural” or “organic” lead generation. In general, SEO entails improving the visibility of your web pages in search engine results. Organic SEO involves ensuring that search engine crawlers can comprehend what is on your web pages to outrank your competitors’ websites.
Because of changing market trends and Google’s algorithm, the meaning of SEO can evolve. Even with the upgrades, SEO still boils down to having a website that accurately communicates what the company does and gives both Google search crawlers and human visitors helpful content.
This can include ensuring that the website is working correctly by avoiding poor codes and using search engine-friendly content that caters to people and crawlers. Inbound links from other websites can also influence your link authority and help you rank higher. More successful techniques to get quality links include blogging, online videos, and social media marketing.
What Is PPC?
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is when you buy visitors or “clicks” from Google or other search engines. PPC allows you to swiftly harness search engine traffic by bidding or paying for keywords linked to your product or service.
PPC ads are often a cost-effective strategy to attract new customers. The cost of bidding on certain words and phrases, on the other hand, differs. Some keywords can be pretty cheap; however, others may cost hundreds of dollars each click due to the intense rivalry.
Difference Between SEO and PPC
The primary distinction between SEO and PPC campaigns is that traffic from SEO is free, whereas traffic from PPC is not. Both make up Search Engine Marketing (SEM), which is one of the techniques you can utilize as part of your overall Internet marketing plan.
The following factors can be used to categorize the other main differences between the two: position in the search results, traffic potential, pricing, conversion, and ease of use.
Position in the Search Results
In general, PPC Ads will appear before and after the organic results.
The location of your ad is based on several factors, including the keywords you’re targeting, the keywords on your landing page, the keywords in your ad content, and so on. It is, however, either above or under the organic results.
Only the middle of the page can show organic results. Whether your listing appears in the top rankings or on the first pages is determined by how well your website is optimized for on-site and off-site SEO.
Traffic Potential
You can gain more site visitors via SEO than from PPC. So, if you can get your website to rank for the keywords you want, you’ll get a lot more traffic than if you pay for the exact keywords. This is because if your website is in one of the top five spots, you can enjoy a steady stream of traffic 24 hours a day, seven days a week, without needing to pay for it.
When the traffic and expenses of first-page positions for SEO and PPC are compared, organic wins. According to some studies, PPC advertising receives more clicks than organic ads; however, this comes at a higher cost.
However, if obtaining first-page rankings for a keyword is challenging, paying for clicks may be your only alternative, as second and third-page positions would almost certainly yield very little to no traffic.
Pricing
While it is correct that PPC traffic is paid and SEO traffic is free, you should keep in mind that getting free traffic from search engines requires a significant amount of hard work and effort.
Almost any keyword you may look up has intense competition. As a result, if you want to rank in the top five, you’ll need a high-quality website and a solid SEO strategy.
Regardless of what some “SEO” firms may try to persuade you, there are no workarounds. If you are unfamiliar with how search engines function or have no SEO knowledge, hiring an SEO specialist to do the job for you is the ideal approach to gain search engine traffic.
The cost of PPC, on the other hand, is determined by a variety of circumstances.
If we look at the most prominent PPC system, Google Ads, the cost per click is determined by the following factors:
- the popularity of the keyword
- the number of advertisers that wish to use the keyword
- the number of relevant websites that have ad positions for the keyword, and so on
Despite Google’s efforts to make the system more user-friendly, it still seems confusing to most people. The great thing is that with PPC, you only pay for clicks rather than views. Furthermore, you can plan your daily budget ahead of time and stick to it, as well as calculate the average cost per click for the terms you’d like to target.
Conversion
Which visitor is more likely to buy anything, sign up for a newsletter, or react to a call to action in general? Is it someone who found you through PPC ads or organic search?
A user who visits via PPC is more likely to convert than one who comes from search if your advertising is well-targeted and optimized. This is because a web page might rank for multiple keywords (not just the ones specified). Therefore, the search visitor may not be browsing for the exact content (or product) displayed on that page. On the other hand, if you conduct an effective PPC campaign, you’ll only get clicks from those who are thoroughly interested in your content or goods.
Ease of Use
If you don’t have the appropriate training and expertise, neither SEO nor PPC is simple to use.
SEO is a time-consuming and labor-intensive approach. It might take months, if not years, to rank for particular keywords, or it could never even happen!
On the other hand, if you want to achieve decent results with PPC, you’ll need to either attend a course or employ a PPC professional to assist you, or you’ll lose a few hundred bucks before you figure out how it works.
How Do SEO and PPC Work Together?
Although SEO and PPC seem pretty distinct, they are actually two facets of search engine marketing.
Despite the fact that these two disciplines have identical goals, such as raising website traffic, conversions, and so on, many marketers see them as different tactics. Businesses are hampering their operations and the possible ROI from their search marketing campaigns by segregating these activities.
Businesses can improve the performance of each strategy and increase their bottom lines by addressing SEO and PPC integration through the perspective of the two techniques being integrally linked approaches.
Let’s look at seven strategies on how to integrate SEO and PPC to optimize your website, generate more leads, and increase revenue.
1. Combining SEO and PPC Will Boost Your Search Engine Visibility
Improving your website’s SEO will give you a higher chance of ranking on the first page, if not top, for one or more keywords you’re targeting. Furthermore, by bidding high enough on PPC advertisements for that exact keyword, your ad will be displayed near the top of the page whenever somebody searches for that keyword.
If you implement all these things for that keyword — optimize your website and buy PPC ads — your brand will lead the search results, and you will have a higher chance of securing those precious clicks.
2. PPC Enables You To Reclaim Clicks From Search Engines That You May Have Missed
You might think that if your business currently ranks first for a keyword organically, you no longer need to pay for a PPC ad for that particular keyword. However, according to a Google study, when a keyword’s search advertisements were suspended, around 89% of the traffic they provided was not replaced by organic rankings. So, although your site is naturally ranked at the top, halting your PPC ads could have a detrimental effect on your traffic!
You can reclaim clicks and attention from searchers who would otherwise go unnoticed by utilizing PPC. Even if you don’t organically rank at the top, PPC can help you gain visitors from people searching for your products or services and for a relatively low cost.
3. You Can Reach Out To Prior Visitors Using Remarketing Campaigns
Let’s imagine your website is ranking reasonably well due to your SEO strategies, and you’re getting a decent number of visitors. However, they’re all buyers or prospects who are taking their time to decide. You can use SEO with remarketing, a type of PPC, to attract these people back to your site at a future point to finish their transaction or conversion.
For instance, if someone is looking for household goods on your website but needs some time to decide, you can buy ad space on a Google-affiliated website to display their adverts for the same household goods later. This will prompt them to return to your site and close the deal.
You might attract past visitors and motivate them to return to finish a transaction or convert into a lead by integrating SEO and PPC in this manner. At the same time, they might have completely forgotten about you if you hadn’t used remarketing.
4. Content Marketing Using Pay-Per-Click
Content is essential when it comes to SEO. It can also contribute significantly to moving customers through the sales funnel. While the purpose of PPC is usually to get visitors and generate revenue quickly, individuals who are developing content with long-term objectives can profit greatly from PPC integration.
Rather than utilizing PPC for its intended purpose, advertisers can promote content and raise brand awareness. Then again, marketers have access to Google Ads data that indicate which products are the most popular, which demographics are the most interested, which keywords convert the best, and other helpful information. Marketers also have access to Google Ads data that indicates the most popular products, the demographics who show the most interest, the most effective keywords, and other helpful information. With this information, SEO experts may develop content that is significantly more effective than content created without it.
Then, by delivering sponsored traffic from Facebook or Google, PPC professionals can assist driving the content up the search engine results, allowing for a quicker ramp-up towards top positions. Even if people don’t click on the ads, they’re becoming more aware of the brand, which fosters trust as the company grows more well-known.
5. PPC Allows You To Experiment With Different Keywords to Improve Your SEO
Search engine optimization can take a long time, a lot of study, and a lot of money. There may be occasions when you consider focusing your SEO efforts on a particular keyword but are unsure if it will pay off. PPC is one approach to assess the feasibility of a keyword for SEO purposes.
Simply choose a term that you believe you have a good chance of ranking for that is related to your products or services and buy PPC ads for it. For a while, keep an eye on the results and observe how your website is doing. If you do well, this may indicate that you should start optimizing your site for it as well. However, you might want to steer clear of SEO for this keyword if your PPC advertisements aren’t working.
PPC is an affordable approach to break the ice on a search engine without spending a lot of time or money on making your website search engine-friendly.
6. Reduce PPC Spending By Using SEO Data
SEO teams also have access to data that might help with paid search advertising.
The truth is that PPC advertising can be pretty costly at times. Fortunately, industry standards from Google Ads show that $1.16 is the typical eCommerce cost-per-click in search. However, specific terms are significantly more expensive. In addition, sectors like legal services spend an average of $6.75 each click.
Regardless of the sector, obtaining the greatest value for one’s money is critical. This goal can be achieved in several ways by providing SEO data to PPC teams, such as:
- Costly keywords can be put on hold: If you’re on a low budget, you might want to concentrate on organically ranking for the pricier keywords. The PPC and SEO teams can work together to determine which keywords should be put on hold and turned over to the SEO department for improvement. In reality, this is likely to be incredibly beneficial, as landing more costly keywords using SEO will not only allow a PPC team to save money but will also deliver high-value traffic for far longer than any sponsored campaign.
- Recognizing long-tail terms that perform well: Businesses can also utilize SEO data to find long-tail keywords that perform well and can be used in PPC campaigns to improve performance and save fees. Long-tail keywords are typically less expensive than generic keywords, resulting in a reduction in marketing costs.
- Improved geotargeting: An SEO team may find that a large portion of organic search traffic originates from a single geographical area. By sharing this information with the PPC team, they can better target this population with their bids.
- Increased total sales: Teams from SEO and PPC can also work together to increase sales. If a business’s product ranks well organically, PPC ads promoting discounts can be put near organic search listings, enhancing visibility in the results and increasing overall traffic.
- A higher quality score: A keyword’s cost per click and the placement of advertisements in search rankings are influenced by the quality score. Because SEOs are in charge of organic search landing page optimization, they can assist PPC initiatives by pushing for total consistency between the ad and the target and the keywords used for each.
7. PPC and SEO Provide You With More Data to Help You Make Better Decisions
Finally, SEO and PPC can help you make better decisions by providing you with a vast amount of information. Comparable KPIs from both your SEO and PPC strategies can be examined, namely:
- Clickthrough rate
- Time on site
- Bounce and exit rates
- Conversion rate
You can use this information to figure out which terms are the most successful at generating sales, as well as which ones are driving people to your site who are unlikely to buy an item or become a lead. This will assist you in making more informed marketing decisions and any website updates.
While you can collect this information independently from PPC and SEO strategies, using both methods can help you gather twice the data you need to make even better judgments.
The Bottomline
For years, experts have debated whether SEO or PPC is the superior option. Many company owners struggle to choose where to spend their digital advertising funds, leaving them confused about which strategy is ideal.
If you have the funds and desire to see results quickly, a PPC campaign will provide you with the most instant results. However, creating ads that convert without overspending for results might take time and experimentation.
If you have a longer time frame in mind and don’t have to see results right away, SEO efforts might provide some of the best outcomes and pay off in the long run. You won’t have to pay for website traffic and leads continually, nor will you have to create fresh advertising constantly.
A well-thought-out marketing strategy that integrates the two activities, on the other hand, is more likely to produce the best overall result.
Sources:
https://www.webfx.com/internet-marketing/how-SEO-PPC-work-together.html
https://www.theedigital.com/blog/seo-vs-ppc
https://ahrefs.com/blog/seo-vs-ppc/
https://searchengineland.com/seo-vs-ppc-pros-cons-integrated-approach-274643
https://www.reliablesoft.net/what-is-the-difference-between-seo-and-ppc/
https://www.visiture.com/blog/integrate-ppc-seo-together-achieve-higher-online-marketing-roi/
