Last Updated on September 2, 2022 by SERP Kingz
While Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a way to increase organic traffic, Pay Per Click (PPC) is a method for generating traffic through targeted advertising in search engines, social media platforms, and other web destinations.
By their nature, PPC campaigns are primarily concerned with producing immediate—but impermanent—benefits, while SEO campaigns take a long time to gain momentum, but are focused on producing long-lasting benefits.
While they might seem like separate, entirely independent ways of bringing visitors to your website (and a lot of marketers who specialize only in SEO or only in PPC still view it this way) they can actually work together.
For marketers who only work in one method or the other, SEO and PPC working together might seem like an unholy alliance of sorts.
But both types of campaigns ultimately have similar goals at the end of the day, even if the tactics that marketers use to achieve them are different.
Each marketing method can support the other method by providing valuable data that can improve the other’s performance.
When both types of marketing campaigns are coordinated, there’s a synergy—they produce more powerful results than they do working separately.
Let’s look at a few of the ways that SEO and PPC campaigns work together.
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Taking Up Space
When your website runs PPC ads, they often appear above search results.
Therefore, no matter how perfectly optimized your SEO campaigns are, Google’s never going to show them in that top spot.
The downsides?
They’re very easy for the searcher to skip over.
Oh yes—and they cost you money each and every time someone clicks.
But by running PPC campaigns and SEO campaigns at the same time, you can cover a lot of real estate on the search results page (SERP).
So, even if the searcher scrolls past the ad section right away and goes to the organic rankings, they still find your site.
By appearing in the results twice (at least), you could say you’re doubling your chances of getting a visitor, all other factors being equal.
Of course, all other factors aren’t equal, so let me put it this way: By getting your brand in front of more eyes, you’re effectively increasing the chances that the search engine user will click through to your business.
Repetition is Recognition
By being so visible and represented on the front page, you’re providing potential visitors (potential customers) with enhanced confidence in your brand—even if they don’t realize it.
Even when people skip over your PPC ads, most of the time, they’re still seeing your name—subliminally.
When they see it again in the search results, you have the benefit of the repetition/recognition effect—one of the most powerful weapons you can wield in marketing. Visitors are more likely to click your link, and to place more confidence in your brand, because they’ve seen it before.
Sharing Intelligence
If you know anything about SEO and PPC, you probably already know that keywords (search terms) are integral parts of both.
If your business has already been optimizing for search engines for some time, you should already have a valuable list of keywords and key phrases you can use to target your ads.
Conversely, if you’ve been running PPC ads for some time, you can harvest keywords from successful campaigns to optimize your pages for search engines; increasing the efficiency of your campaigns and lowering your spend per visitor/conversion.
Even if you don’t maintain a strong PPC advertising campaign indefinitely, you can discover a lot of valuable insights that can fuel your long-term SEO strategies. PPC is a great testing ground to discover the most effective search terms, landing page variations, and so on.
So, it may make sense for your business to use PPC to get short-term results quickly, then weave that data into SEO campaigns to produce more profitable, long-term results.
Raise (Brand) Awareness
When a visitor clicks on one of your PPC ads, they should be taken to a landing page where they can learn more about your business and your services/products.
Certainly, you’d rather have them click through your funnel and become a customer, but this just isn’t going to happen every time.
Visitors from your PPC ads may have clicked through by mistake, they may get a phone call, they may get distracted by a notification from TikTok—or they may just not be ready to buy.
The upside?
They just became aware of your business, and what you offer.
Even if those visitors don’t immediately convert, they’re likely to remember your brand (and their experience with your brand) when they’re searching in the future.
Conclusion
It’s not the old days of SEO vs PPC anymore. It’s now SEO & PPC.
Still, even in 2022, many businesses are handling things the old way.
Separately.
That means if your business takes a holistic approach to search engine marketing/optimization, rather than a “siloed” approach, it’s still possible to gain an edge over your competitors from this alone.
The term “synergy” is often overused in business, but it applies in this situation.
You simply get much better results from coordinated PPC and SEO campaigns than you get from running these types of campaigns separately.
If you want to make sure your company’s SEO and PPC campaigns are aligned for maximum performance and efficiency—Get a marketer who can do both.
