SEO and PPC are two fundamentally different entities in the world of online marketing. Naturally, this has caused some businesses to either choose between one or the other, i.e., see them as contrasting alternatives, or rather handle them separately within their overall campaign. They are, however, inextricably linked in that they are both categorised as being inbound search marketing strategies. That is, they tend towards the same aim.
We’re here to demonstrate how a holistic approach to search marketing is the most efficient route to take. Namely, how SEO and PPC work together to drive integral business goals such as improving website performance, increasing leads, and ultimately boosting revenue. In this article we’ll cover the basic information alongside the in-depth details of this integrated solution to B2B marketing.
What are the main differences between SEO and PPC?
The primary difference between SEO and PPC is that PPC is a paid-for approach to online marketing, conversely, SEO is free. As such, the nature of the traffic received as a result from each is notably different. SEO steadily drives the organic traffic intake of a website, whereas PPC is geared towards delivering a fast and direct outcome.
The goal of SEO is to gradually increase the quality and quantity of traffic simultaneously, meaning that it might take a while for the effects of SEO to become apparent. With PPC, however, potential visitors begin to be made aware of your business as soon as your adverts are live, that is, if they make a search query that aligns with the keywords you have bidded on. But because SEO is a sustained effort, this means that the positive consequences of optimising your websites and webpages will be more long-lasting, relative to how when a PPC promotion ends, a site’s metrics will likely regress to their previous state.
The Advantages of a Combined SEO and PPC Marketing Strategy
Having outlined the key particulars that differentiate SEO and PPC, it remains that both strategies share a common aim. The aim being, to increase the awareness & click through rates of, the volume of traffic achieved, and the consequent conversions gained for a website.
Pertinently, SEO does not have a direct effect on PPC, nor does PPC similarly affect SEO. For instance, if you were to pay for ad placements for a particular keyword, these advertisements would not have an impact upon your continued SEO strategy, whether for better or worse and vice versa. Meaning, that in no way could the two be deemed as advisably mutually exclusive, given that there is no room for complications.
With this in mind, it quite quickly becomes evident that the best approach to take when it comes to online advertising is to incorporate both strategies within an overall marketing campaign. By doing so, you are thereby able to reap the benefits inherent in both. Namely, the immediacy of PPC in addition to the continuous viability that comes with SEO. Here are the detailed advantages of such a combined employment:
1.SERP Coverage
Perhaps the most plain benefit of utilising both SEO and PPC is that it maximises your SERP coverage. For instance, if the focus of your marketing campaign was to successfully obtain those top and side page advertisements while actively forgoing an SEO effort, then you might secure the former paid-for spots, but you’d be dismissing the importance of the organically achieved high-ranking positions.
It may be that you initially think that these top SERP positions are substantially difficult to achieve, and in the cases concerning popular keywords you’d be right, but with SEO you get the advantage of benefiting from long-tail keywords which are relatively easier to rank for. For example, returning the search query “phone repair service” will evince a high degree of competitiveness, whereas “phone repair service in Camden” will take a shorter amount of time to acquire a ranking position for.
It makes sense that if your business has vastness intrinsic with its online presence, then this ultimately equates to more website traffic; users will be more likely to click through to your product or service page if they have two opportunities to do so in the SERP. It’s also worth noting that the majority of people might be inclined to skip over ads because of the fact that they are somewhat intrusive, and so intuitively less trustworthy than their organic counterparts.
2.Brand Awareness & Confidence
An increased sense of brand awareness & confidence goes hand-in-hand with an extensive range of SERP coverage. Awareness is the first stage of the sales funnel, it’s therefore essential that, as a business, you fulfil this point to the best of your ability if you are to be successful. If your website or its pages become unavoidable within a certain search query due to the visibility provided by both paid-for advertisements and high organic search rankings, then users will become exponentially, not to mention firmly, aware of your brand and how its offerings can help them.
Naturally, PPC is foremost at this juncture because of how likely Search users are to see an advert that is squarely placed in front of them when they input a query pertaining to a given industry or field. From there, they will either decide to click onto the advert where they will then be taken to a site’s landing page for further exploration of a brand, or they may simply ignore it. Obviously, the former is the ideal outcome, however, the latter should not be a discouraging occurrence. Rather, PPC ads work both in a stark and a subliminal way. That is, even if a user takes a cursory glance at the advertisement, they will immediately become aware of the brand it is attached to, leading them to likely remember it in the future if their need for a certain product or service arises.
Moreover, it might seem like PPC takes precedence over SEO in this context, yet it opens up the opportunity for an exemplary demonstration of how each of these two individual facets of digital marketing work symbiotically. As previously mentioned, PPC ads are inherently less trustworthy because of their intrusive nature, namely, how they force brand awareness on a user. But when these are paired with organic high Search rankings, not only does this double your chances of garnering awareness, it likewise negates any loss regarding brand credibility. In this way, your brand will establish itself as being a reliable and trustworthy figure, instilling a particular level of confidence in prospective consumers, all while you maintain an elevated degree of awareness.
3.Cost Reduction
Cost is evidently one of the main concerns when it comes to running a business, making any method that reduces expenditure virtually a necessity. PPC is generally considered to be a cheap way of increasing a website’s click through rate, entailing only a low initial set-up cost. Having said this, outgoings for PPC can swiftly accumulate and turn out to be quite costly if you are actively bidding on multiple keywords and, as a consequence, your site is experiencing seemingly lucrative spikes in traffic. Remember to bear in mind that you are being charged per visitor when it comes to PPC.
In this light, the background details of SEO are the reverse of those for PPC. There will be a fairly-weighed fee when you decide to undertake an SEO campaign because you will have to hire a business that specialises in it. But, when the dust has settled, you will be left with a wholly optimised website which hosts pages that rank highly within the SERPs. Add to this, that there will be no further cost for the resultant traffic you receive, as is the case with PPC.
How these factors relate lies in the context of when your SEO is causing your pages to rank sufficiently well, while you are still continuing to pay out a lot due to PPC for the exact same keywords. I.e., there is a fine line between when the absolute maximum amount of coverage is needed, and when it becomes monetarily wasteful. If your organic traffic is functioning well enough for a certain keyword to the point where PPC becomes secondary, then it would be a wise business decision to halt bidding for such ad placements. This is especially the case if you aren’t doing so well in other keyword areas. By making some select keyword rankings entirely organic, you thereby free up resources to be allocated towards other competitive keywords where performance is lacking, thus allowing you to efficiently streamline your business’ Search operations for optimal turnover.
4.Keyword Certainty
The principal similarity that SEO and PPC share is that each of them heavily rely on keyword optimization in order to be returned for relevant search queries. For a business, alongside their service or product, to appear in SERPs then the most suitable words and phrases have to be chosen as targets.
If you’re not equipped with the apt data which reveals the correct keywords, a likely instance for small businesses who have just started out, then it’s hard to discern where to start. Established brands who have had SEO and PPC processes executed for a while are at an advantage here in that they know the specific keywords that perform effectively, in addition to those that do not. At first it may seem to be that trial and error is the option to go with when it comes to testing the viability of keywords. However, this isn’t really practical in terms of SEO since SEO doesn’t deliver immediate results, instead, such efforts become gradually visible over the course of a continued effort which involves a lot of time, as discussed. On the other hand, as we know, PPC is a form of marketing that produces expeditious results.
Followingly, what this means is that you can pick a keyword which is relevant to your business, purchase PPC advertising for it, and monitor the outcome over a set period so that you are able to see its performance. In this way, you can be certain of which keywords are going to be profitable for your business’ website by providing it with visibility and traffic. Namely, what terms users are inputting into Search when looking for products and services similar to what you’re offering. This gives you the capability to manage and direct your SEO campaign much more effectively, wasting no time or money by blindly targeting keywords. Given that the initial expense of PPC is markedly low, there is no reason as to why you shouldn’t invest in it to inform your wider SEO efforts. Further still, when SEO results do eventually show, having two separate data channels showing time spent on page, click through rate, keyword rankings, organic traffic, and conversion rate is always useful for singularly accurate data analysis, such analysis being important for sagacious business decision-making.
5.Remarketing
The final advantage that comes with using both SEO and PPC is remarketing. When businesses begin to advertise online, they usually tend towards SEO because of the ostensibly comprehensive benefits that it brings. After all, the bulk of all website traffic is organic, as opposed to paid Search.
Admittedly, this is true for when users originally visit your site, indicating that they are possibly about to purchase what you’re offering. If, however, they bounce or exit your site, then SEO isn’t designed to bring such users back, evidently increasing the chances that they’ll withdraw to decide before opting to go with a rival business when they return. PPC addresses these anomalies by affording you with the capacity to retarget users who have visited your site, that is, those who have exhibited an interest, in turn, presenting you with higher traffic margins and conversion rates.
As we have illustrated, both SEO and PPC are both home to exclusive benefits which are equally vital to a business’ overall online marketing campaign. Some often view the two as competing strategies despite this not being the circumstance. It is not a question of whether SEO is better than PPC or vice versa, rather, each supplies advantages which the other does not. But contrary to being incompatible, the crux is that these benefits are complementary, meaning that when they are seamlessly integrated they manifest as a more complete approach to digital marketing. If you want to ensure brand awareness, website traffic, and revenue increases for your business through a congruous implementation of SEO and PPC, then feel free to get in touch today!
