Digital marketing has evolved significantly over the last couple of decades. The days when you could stuff your content with keywords and rank on top of the search engines are long gone. Today, the frequently changing search engine algorithms, cut-throat competition and the push towards paid advertising have rendered it difficult for brands to get organic reach and traffic.
They say SEO + PPC = Match made in heaven.
Over the past year, we have seen numerous algorithm updates, including the Penguin update and an introduction to Possum. We also saw a major change in how ads are placed on desktop search engine result pages (SERP).
All of this indicated that the success of a brand is not anymore relying on a single crutch. To make a brand successful, it needs to work coherently and instead treat SEO and PPC as a unified silo.
With the New RankBrain technology in effect, Google is now aligning its SERP layouts based on content quality and relevance. It is now posing a range of new challenges for the SEO strategists.
With every adjustment being made, SEO specialists are required to develop new methods to rank.
The Benefit of Integrating SEO with PPC
Everyone wants to win prime listing positions on Google Search. In order to achieve that, digital marketing strategists are quite inclined at combining their SEO practices with Pay-Per-Click (PPC) practices. Not only does it maximizes the traffic on your website but it also increases the chance of conversions.
Here are some interesting ways of how PPC ads can help add value to your SEO practices.
With PPC, You Can Discover Valuable Keywords
Keywords play an important role in every SEO and PPC marketing strategy. If you are aiming to appear more in Google Searches, then you need to perform thorough research of the right keywords.
While SEO takes time to show possible results, PPC shows immediate results showing which keywords are effective and which keywords are ineffective. As a result, you will be able to optimize your SEO targeting strategy in such a way that it generates the best results. Data assembled from PPC can help you understand what customers are looking for on the Internet. Hence, when you use these keywords in your SEO practices, you eventually see better results than your previous SEO campaigns.
Use Remarketing Campaign Data to Reach Previous Customers
Assume that your website is attracting a great number of visitors, all thanks to your SEO practices! However, the people who are coming to your website are mostly shoppers or people who are still in the consideration stage. What you need are more authentic customers, those who are willing to purchase. To achieve that, PPC offers you a form of remarketing. You can combine your efforts of SEO with PPC remarketing campaigns to attract such visitors who are keenly interested to purchase.
Imagine, someone is searching for surgical instruments and they visit your website. However, they require time to think about it and instead of purchasing, they leave. Instead of wondering why they left from your storefront, purchase ad space from a website in Google’s network and then show them ads. If the customer happens to visit that website on Google, they will be sent back to your website to complete the purchase.
PPC Enables You to Make Smart SEO Decisions
If you want to make robust decisions for your brand, combine data collected from SEO and PPC to find the best results. Some SEO and PPC campaigns have common metrics such as:
- Click through rate
- Bounce and exit rates
- Time on site
- Conversion rate
From this information, you can determine which keywords are the most effective to generate sales. You will also find such keywords which are only generating traffic. And by studying the above metrics, you can further identify which of the individuals are interested in making a purchase and which aren’t.
Such data will eventually enable you to make smarter decisions when it comes to SEO practices.
Reaching out to customers is not easy. Yet, it is one of the most important parts of your marketing plan. Let’s say your brand is location specific, then there are several people within the vicinity who will conduct local searches. Eventually, they will also come across your product/service while searching.
With the use of PPC ads in local searches, you will altogether increase local leads on your website. When you optimize PPC ad on local searches, they will start appearing as sponsored ads on Google searches. And while there is an effective SEO done on your website, it will also start appearing on the first page of Google. Aside from that, your business will also appear in Google My Business listings.
In this way, you will add a triple impact to your ad strategy making your business the relevant choice.
The marketing world is divided between SEO and PPC. Some vote in favor of the former while others might put their weight behind the latter. The fact of the matter is that both SEO and PPC have their own significance and are powerful techniques. By using both in conjunction, you can maximize the impact of your digital marketing efforts.
In this infographic, you will learn how to integrate PPC and SEO smartly and achieve great results.
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