SEO and PPC are closely related. They represent two parts of search engine marketing that are responsible for generating the key sources of website traffic: organic (SEO) and paid (PPC).
Due to the close relationship between these two crucial marketing strategies, it is important to explore how the best practices of SEO and PPC interact with one another.
In other words, what are the best practices for using SEO and PPC together in 2019? How do we intertwine these two strategies effectively to build our business in today’s digital marketing landscape?
Mobile Is A Must
You absolutely must be taking mobile into consideration in everything you do, even beyond your SEO and PPC strategies. Mobile has more than eclipsed desktop as the primary device type for search users. This means it should really be your first thought when creating paid ad components or optimizing for organic search.
Mobile users behave differently than what we’ve historically experienced with desktop. They search differently, navigate pages differently, respond to different types of offers, etc. And, they absolutely won’t tolerate long loading times. So, be sure that your site is running smoothly and quickly on mobile devices.
Luckily, your PPC campaigns and SEO dashboards offer a lot of insight into how your unique mobile audiences are behaving. You can use these data sets to make better decisions that are optimized for mobile users reaching your pages through paid and organic means.
Optimize For Voice Search
Almost every mobile device is equipped with a virtual personal assistant that allows users to ask questions, which the device then searches to find the answers to. This, along with the release of many smart home devices (Amazon Echo, Google Home, etc.), has created a huge spike in the number of voice searches.
When consumers use their voice to search, the query is different from a typed or text search. For example, when typing a search, we often abbreviate and use fewer words. We don’t do this when speaking to a device. We use full sentences, often in the form of a question. A text search for “best car seats” becomes, “what are the best car seats on the market?”
This impacts how we strategize for keywords. As more and more people utilize voice-enabled devices to complete searches, the greater the importance of ranking for featured snippets and focusing on long-tail keywords becomes.
You may want to take some time to explore how much voice search traffic you’re already receiving. What sort of queries did these individuals use? This will give you a clearer idea of what sort of questions people pose to their voice search devices and how to strategize accordingly.
Don’t Neglect PPC Remarketing Campaigns
Increasing the number of visitors to your websites is a great benefit of both SEO and PPC. But, having lots of site traffic isn’t enough. You need visitors to convert. More often than not, however, they won’t take action right away. They’ll leave your site in search of another offer, or decide that they aren’t really to take action yet.
You can’t give up on these potential leads. They didn’t arrive at your site on accident, which means there is still a high chance that they are willing to convert. They just need a reminder that your site and products exist, and maybe a little added incentive.
This is one of the important intersections of PPC and SEO strategies. SEO attracts potential shoppers as they are researching and comparing products. They may not be ready to purchase right away, but, a few days later, when they see a PPC ad for the same product, the timing clicks.
So, pay attention to who is visiting your site and what pages they are viewing. This will allow you to run more effective remarketing PPC campaigns that will draw them back in for a future or additional purchase.
Utilize Both Strategies To Target The Most Valuable Keywords
While not a new strategy, it’s still a place where a lot of digital marketers miss the target. You have a list of high-priority keywords. These are terms that are often very competitive and difficult to rank with, no matter if you’re using SEO or PPC tactics.
Ideally, you want to be visible on all of the SERPs for these terms. Because of their competitive nature, it may be very hard to organically rank for, in terms of SEO. And, they may be expensive to place ads on, when leveraging PPC.
You want to plan your strategies carefully. If you are struggling to rank for a certain keyword with SEO, see what the cost of a paid ad would be. Likewise, if placing an ad is very expensive, it may be smarter to invest more time into SEO strategies to get your site onto the first page for those results.
You need to make conscious decisions about which strategy is going to offer the path of least resistance. This is difficult to accomplish and sometimes you just have to go with your gut, but it will ensure that you are making the most of your time and maximizing your chances for targeting all of these most valuable keywords.
Blend SEO and PPC Data Together For Exciting New Insights
SEO and PPC create heaps of data. It’s impossible to ignore. There isn’t a successful marketer around that doesn’t explore their data and use it to guide their strategies. Some marketers, however, don’t appreciate how closely PPC and SEO are aligned. Thus, they forget to use SEO data to inform PPC strategies and vice versa.
Your most successful ad components can give clues towards your next SEO-friendly content asset. For example, if ads that highlight a particular quality, or mention a certain offer, receive the highest clickthrough rates, then this is a big hint that these are important keywords to target in your next blog or meta description.
It can work in reverse too. If you have content that is exceeding your normal performance metrics, look under the hood and see what makes that piece exceptionally compelling. Then, translate these insights into more alluring ad content.
In short, don’t exclusively look at your PPC and SEO data separately. Instead, think critically about what PPC-related insights may be in your SEO data or how you can use PPC metrics to guide your SEO efforts.
Conclusions
Digital marketing is a broad term that encompasses many different strategies, including SEO and PPC. To be successful as a digital marketer, it isn’t just about being good at each individual strategy, but also understanding how each marketing channel connects to the next and the ways that customers move across these various touchpoints. This is why the tactics discussed above are so crucial to implement in your own SEO and PPC efforts.
