SEO and SEM—The Dynamic Duo for Killer Digital Marketing

by Marketopia | Jul 5, 2016

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaigns—when used together—can produce online fireworks, giving your Internet marketing campaigns a powerful jolt in the following ways:

Improved Click Through Rates (CTR)

Research conducted by Seer found that when a PPC ad and organic listing both appeared in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), they produced the following effects on their clients’ CTR:

PPC CTR rose from 5.66% to 18.06% when SEO, or organic search, was added

Organic CTR rose from 6.15% to 38.26% when PPC was added. That’s a 522% increase in CTR!

Improved PPC Quality Score

Google uses a ‘Quality Score’ to determine your PPC cost-per-click (CPC) which affects ad rank, based on ad content and keywords on your landing page. Google uses different metrics to rank pages in organic search.

This can be problematic if your SEO and PPC teams aren’t working together in your digital marketing initiatives. The SEO team is charged with optimizing pages for organic search and might not even consider ad quality score factors. When the two teams collaborate to prioritize both ad quality score and organic search, it yields significantly better PPC results.

A More Complete Picture of User Experience

Google is placing far more attention on your users’ website experience than you may realize when it comes to SEO and PPC ad ranking. Excellent user experience not only helps with your search ranking and cost for PPC, it improves conversion rates.

Analyzing the insights gained from both PPC and SEO channels benefits your search campaigns as well as gives you valuable information in regards to your inbound and outbound marketing campaigns. Paid campaign data, when combined with organic usage data from website analytics, provides a more complete picture of how searchers are experiencing your online properties.

Amplify the Impact of Effective Keywords

PPC’s Search Query Report identifies what keywords are driving traffic to your website. By incorporating those keywords into page content and other inbound marketing materials, you’ll refine your organic search efforts, as well as increase your ad quality score for PPC.

When planning your Internet Marketing strategy, it’s imperative that your SEO and PPC efforts are married to one another. If these two search strategies are executed independently, they can actually hinder or penalize not only your website—but your entire digital campaign. Combining PPC and SEO into a unified strategy will improve user experience, increase click through rate and improve your bottom line.