The question is as old as digital media itself. Where should I put my marketing dollars: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising?
To answer this, it helps to understand Search Engine Marketing (SEM). This kind of marketing includes both paid (the search ads that show up first or PPC) and organic search (the listings underneath the paid ads, which are a result of SEO). Many marketers are used to treating these two channels as separate from each other. But here’s the kicker — when you combine the two, you get the best bang for your buck.
So, what’s that look like? It’s a close collab between you, your Paid Media team and your SEO team. Follow these strategies, and together you’ll make pure marketing magic — and money:
1. Share Key Data
Your SEO and Paid Media (PPC) teams should be sharing keyword research to maximize the effectiveness of each team’s strategy. Keyword research is essential to any successful digital marketing strategy. Knowing what terms are driving the most volume and then making sure you are showing up in SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) is key. Even more important is sharing what each team finds. This is a sure-fire way to boost your bottom line.
If you’re running a PPC campaign, you’ll want to share search term reports with your SEO team. This is a list of search terms that people used, which resulted in your ad being shown and clicked on. It’s also best to combine search query data with organic metrics like engagement, bounce rate, and page sessions to support both paid and SEO efforts.
2. Combine Organic & Paid Links
Want to take up more space on SERPs? We bet you do – after all, more spots make for a better chance of users clicking through to your landing page. Our top tip: Include an organic and paid link on the same page. That one move could up the likelihood of your ad being clicked by 25%. If you’re averaging 100,000 organic clicks a month, that’s an incremental 25,000 clicks. Not bad.
3. Partner on Remarketing Lists
Not all remarketing lists are created equal. Rather than having one blanket retargeting campaign, we recommend segmenting them. Partner with your SEO team to form retargeting lists based on what organic listings users are coming from. This will boost the performance of your campaigns by improving the quality of the audience. It’ll also give you flexibility to move your budget around, turn off underperforming segments, and invest more in your high-performers.
No matter what industry you’re in, you’re in the business of building your business. Do more of it by combining your SEO and PPC teams. Or let Red Door’s cross-channel marketing team handle it – like we do for one of our industry-leading healthcare clients. The PPC team partnered with our Content and SEO teams to implement an intent-based campaign where we tracked, targeted, and showed different pieces of content to users. The result? A 43% increase in engaged users. When we come together, big things can happen. Contact us today to get going.