Which would you prefer: a 300% ROI or ranking #1 over your competitors in your top priority keywords for free? The answer isn’t always simple, but the key today is to choose how to leverage and both to maximize your return. The consumer journey is becoming more complex, and changes on one channel can often, if they don’t always, have an impact on other media. This is particularly true for Paid Search and Organic Search.
Although everyone knows the importance of using both Organic and Paid Search, teams in-house and agencies often only discuss collaborating and sharing insight. The importance of an Omnichannel Strategy and the customer journey are only two pieces.
Collaboration between channels is essential, whether it’s within an agency or with other partners of the client or their internal teams. There is always room for improvement, whether it’s learning more from data or testing theories earlier. The key to successful and efficient cross-channel campaigns is to share and analyze the data and insights. It sounds simple… or so you’d think. We all run into teams or channels that work in silos. They forget that their customers have many touchpoints. Today, the customer journey is often more complex than a linear one. Brands must now attract customers not only at the top but also throughout the stages of the customer journey. How can you reach the right customer at the right moment if your digital channels don’t work together?
It’s not a revolutionary solution, and it doesn’t take a lot of time. But, when you find out how many teams share data and collaborate, the answer is surprising. Everyone is working toward the same goals.
PPC + SEO: Let’s be friends
It is not new to share insights across channels. Many of the insights from this SEO vs PPC article published in 2016 are still valid and can be used for better results. We set out to test the process and refine it to create easy-to-implement steps that all teams could follow.
Let’s take a look at the benefits of each of these channels before we get into the details of how to integrate them for maximum results. The complementary nature between the two media, organic Search and PPC, can help build brand awareness over time despite changes in ad spending. Paid Search offers the agility and speed to test and iterate, as well as the top position in the results.
SEO Benefits:
- Brand awareness
- Credibility
- CPCs (free)
- No Need to Spend Ad Spend
- The algorithm is subject to change.
PPC Benefits:
- Speed and Agility
- The top of the page is called the prime position.
- Focused targeting
- A/B Testing
- Updates to algorithms are not required
Process: How to combine PPC and SEO insights
This process can be used by in-house teams, agencies, or multiple agency partners who work for the same brand.
It’s actually a simple concept when you look at the bigger picture:
- Keyword research
- Share data (including keywords, ad copy, and other information)
- Optimize your business with the latest technology
- GET RESULTS
- REPEAT!
This can be done easily by using a task-oriented platform, where each team has recurring monthly tasks they complete and can share across channels to gain insight. There are many benefits to having all groups under one roof. We will discuss this in a later blog. However, it is possible to do the same thing if they are under different agencies.
Non-brand campaigns are required.
The most important SEO campaign is to focus on non-brand keyword searches. This will bring new traffic to your website. A brand will almost always rank naturally for its brand. You need to attract customers who are not familiar with your brand to increase market share. In Paid Search, you should make your non-brand keyword work harder than relying solely on brand keywords.
Conduct keyword research
Each team should complete its keyword research if this is a new campaign. Bonus: This keyword analysis should be shared among groups in order to capitalize on missed opportunities. Remember that not all keywords paid search bids are good for SEO, and not all SEO keywords are good for paid Search.
Remember that while these channels may have a lot in common and can use each other’s insights to improve performance in some cases, each channel has a different purpose. Paid Search, for example, may not bid on a keyword that Organic Search optimizes for, such as ‘what to consider when buying stand-up paddling boards.’ This keyword may have a more informational intent, and the user might be searching for a more educational source. Organic Search could send them to a company blog and build credibility. We can tell from this Search that the user may be at the top and not in the purchasing phase. Paid Search might not allocate a budget to this keyword because it will take a longer time to convert. Organic Search might optimize for a keyword that Paid Search wants, like “best paddleboards for dogs,” but it can’t get on the first page because of its competition. Paid Search can bid on this keyword instead, as the user is likely to convert. They are searching for the best deals on a paddleboard that they can use to take their dog out with.
Share your insights
After a minimum of one month running Paid Search campaigns, PPC should have sufficient data to share. Download your report on non-brand terms and share it with the SEO team. Sharing non-brand times that are converting and performing well is great, but sharing keywords that are struggling or are spending money without converting can be a powerful way to combine the two channels. Suppose an “SEO agency,” for example, is consuming almost all your budget but not generating any conversions or assisted conversions. In that case, it may be best to stop bidding and target Organic Search instead.
- Organic Search team Review the keyword data to find those that are most relevant to your SEO strategy and see if you are already ranking for these keywords.
- If the team is not ranking, they need to determine if it should, which page to optimize, and how to optimize the page.
- The next step, if the keyword is ranking, is to optimize the page for which it is ranking by updating metadata and the page copy.
- Review the top-performing ad copy for PPC and SEO –
- Use the insights gained from PPC tests of ad copies to improve metadata (title tags, meta descriptions) and increase CTR. PPC campaigns test ad variations continuously and see results 10x quicker than SEO.
