When businesses are looking at enhancing their digital presence, search engine marketing is a typical starting point. After all, this is often how new customers find you and your products and services. But many organisations get tied up at this point in an argument about using organic SEO or PPC. The reality is that it’s not a case of one versus the other, but actually using them together to get the best of both worlds.
What’s the Difference Between Organic SEO and PPC?
SEO (search engine optimisation) is a process of improving your website and company rankings on Google searches. It’s an organic process, which means that it’s essentially free (if you’re willing and able to do everything yourself). Sounds great? Well, you do have to put a lot of time and effort into this process. This is where writing high-quality, keyword-rich content for your website, blog and social media comes in. You’ll have to make sure each piece of content is original, relevant to your users, and optimised for the algorithm Google uses. But the benefits are impressive, especially over the long-term.
PPC (pay-per-click) advertising is very different – the opposite to SEO in many ways. For one thing, it’s instant. Once your ad is active, you’ll see your rank change because you’ve paid for that position. And that’s the catch. Even if you set up the account and ads yourself, you’ll start paying as soon as the ads go live.
By taking a combined approach and balancing your SEO and PPC, businesses are able to leverage the benefits of both strategies. Digital Freak offers SEO services as well as PPC setup and management. Our combined management of both services includes keeping your ad pay within a reasonable budget and reaping the rewards of consumer trust, engagement and loyalty through improved organic rankings.
The Benefits of Combining SEO and PPC for Optimal Results
Visibility
This is the primary goal of search engine marketing, and this combination really delivers. By using a two-pronged approach, you can dominate both paid and organic results, giving the impression that you are a clear industry leader and increasing traffic to your website dramatically.
Follow through
You’re not going to get much traction with customers if your high-impact, expertly-designed PPC ad takes them to a dismal web page! Your product descriptions and pages need to be great quality too, with useful tools and information as well as being fully-optimised for search engines if you want conversions from your PPC ad to end in a sale. Don’t worry, Digital Freak can help you need a website revamp before we begin.
Maximise the use of keyword data
Whether you do a PPC campaign or an SEO campaign, you’ll need to do extensive keyword research. This keyword research is very valuable, and it can be used for both campaigns to ensure you get the maximum reach for both services.
Cover your bases
Digital marketing is an incredibly competitive field, especially in certain industries like ecommerce. This means that you need to have a comprehensive and expertly-guided strategy if you want to stand out from the competition. After all, everyone wants the top spots on Google. By employing both PPC and SEO, your search engine marketing plan is much more secure and stands a better chance of success. SEO will tell everyone about your brand’s values, what you do and how your products and services can assist them. PPC is ideal for attracting and reattracting customer’s attention whether they’re looking at Google or even other websites. Together, you’re unstoppable.
Greater visibility on social media
Social media goes hand-in-hand with search engine marketing these days, and this combined strategy really ensures your business gets the best out of this relationship. You can create very specific, targeted PPC ads for platforms like Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and even LinkedIn that will harvest useful customer behaviour that can be used to create more targeted (and therefore more effective) organic content.
Integration between ecommerce feeds and Google Ads
Google is a fan of ecommerce, so there’s quite a lot you can do if you’re in that industry when you combine PPC and SEO. For example, you can link certain pages on your website to a relevant PPC ad, linking customers directly to the page where they can purchase that exact product directly from the search results. This takes advantages of Google’s latest shopping ads functionality. And Digital Freak are certified providers!
Combining SEO and PPC is about reaching your search engine marketing goals in the most efficient and effective way possible. If you have poor SEO, your PPC ad spend will be significantly larger in the attempt to get good conversions. However, if you only focus on SEO, you’ll have to wait months to see the results, may miss out on a section of your customers and have a more difficult time making your strategy more refined and targeted. As with many things in life, it’s all about balance!
If you would like assistance with your organisation’s search engine marketing strategy or would like advice to guide your SEO and PPC strategy, please contact our friendly digital marketing team today.
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I’m all about making your online ads pay. As a PPC pro, I spend my days and nights creating, optimising, and analysing client strategies so they deliver the clicks. With a mix of creative and analytical strategies, I’ll make sure your campaigns land your business the top spot – and that customers see you first.
