In our last article we looked at some of the fundamentals of SEO – Search Engine Optimisation. In that article we also referred to PPC – Pay Per Click – adverts.

As we explained in the above article, PPC adverts show up at the top of Search Engine Results and can easily be identified by the Ad label in a box next to them. If a user clicks on the advert to go to the advertised website, the website owner will be charged money by the search engine.

In this article we explore five advantages of combining SEO and PPC together.

Double your traffic

First and foremost, using SEO and PPC together is simply the best strategy for overall SERP domination. SEO and PPC feed off each other in this respect. According to Google, having both a PPC ad and a top organic search listing together will result in double the amount of click throughs. You can increase traffic even further by “going local“: linking local PPC campaigns to tailored local landing pages.

Establish reputation and brand

For new businesses, it is particularly important to establish your reputation, audience and brand. Having an overall combined SEO/PPC strategy can enable you to gain SERP visibility and build up a sense of authority around your brand. If you hit the right high-ranking SEO keywords for your target audience, and also place well-targeted PPC adverts based on those same keywords then you will have two access routes for users to find you.

Sharing data

There are various opportunities to use data effectively between SEO and PPC:

• Keyword data: Adwords“Search Query Reports” can help to identify which PPC keywords are trending so that SEO and page content can be tailored around these terms. They can also be used to create new landing pages which could improve your keywords quality score and ad rank.
• Content: AdWords can also reveal what copy is working well so that content teams can incorporate successful content and call to actions in their copy. This can then have a positive impact on organic listings and conversions.
• Remarketing: PPC can be used to remarket new products and services to existing users, and be underpinned by SEO in terms of creative content.
• Sitelinks: PPC campaigns on Google AdWords campaigns can be enhanced by sitelinks to SEO-rich blog posts. This can generate more traffic to the blogs so that they reach a wider audience. This combination is also effective in increasing click through rates on the ads and driving more sales.
• PPC strategy and timing: It is important to factor in organic traffic trends when planning your PPC strategy. If you plan your PPC spend around times of high organic traffic this could improve your PPC performance.

Competitor research

Competitor research: Although your competitors may currently be different for both SEO and PPC, this could change at any time. So it’s important to keep on top of your competition. PPC offers a lot of data – for example “Auction Insights” – that can help you to identify new competitors and to be aware when certain competitors are pushing harder. This data can be invaluable to inform your SEO strategy.

Reducing down time

Last but by no means least, if you have site problems this can impact the effectiveness of SEO and the cost of PPC. So it’s important that PPC and SEO teams coordinate constantly in order to reduce downtime and avoid situations such as sending a potential consumer to a broken page.

This coordination is particularly important for a site migration. Whether you are moving your website from one platform to another or creating a completely new site, combining PPC and SEO activities should help you to minimise the glitches. You need to choose a quiet time to implement your migration, pause the PPC campaigns during migration and then identify key SEO considerations after the migration. Also remember to update URL mapping documents, which will aid PPC when changing the URLs in the campaigns.

We hope that the above tips will help you to implement well thought-out and integrated PPC and SEO strategies. IF you follow the above advice you should be in a strong position to improve and maintain the success of your website.

But also remember that driving traffic to your site is only half the battle: you need to make sure that it stays there. So your site needs to match up to the expectations raised in your PPC adverts and you need to make it as easy as possible for potential customers to convert. So make sure that your site is fully operational, with relevant and engaging content and easily navigable links.

With this combination of skilful SEO/PPC strategy and excellent user experience, your should see your traffic , your conversions and your brand go from strength to strength.