Implementing a Synergistic Strategy
Often times, within the marketing department of any given company, the department will be roughly divided into two different teams: those who deal with PPC, or pay-per-click advertising, and those who deal with SEO, or search engine optimization. The conventional wisdom in the field states that these two things should be kept apart, but this reasoning actually falls apart under even a basic logical analysis – if the two teams are working towards the same goal, shouldn’t they be working in tandem with one another?
Google Has Changed and Marketers Need to Take Note of That
Many people are not aware of this, because the implementation has been very subtle, but Google has quietly changed the way it displays search engine result pages, or SERP’s. Before, it would be very obvious that you were looking at an ad due to the fact that the background was colored differently and that the word “ad” would be prominently displayed near it.
This is no longer the case – all of the visual cues that you were looking at a paid advertisement have more or less been removed. This means that Google has been actively working to narrow the gap between PPC and SEO generated results, which means that it is now more difficult to tell which channel is actually driving user behavior.
Paid Results Can Be Used to Enhance Organic Results
In previously conducted studies on this exact topic, it has been determined that when conducting a search for a product or service, if a potential customer clicks on an ad, they will click on organic results from that same exact website. In other words, an ad can lead someone to an organic link, and an organic link can lead someone to an ad – the two don’t have to be mutually exclusive.
SEO Can be Used to Boost Your Ad’s Quality Score
Based on how well your landing page is designed, Google will give the ad that you use to lead people there a “Quality Score.” Having effective SEO means that your landing page will be optimized, which means that your ad’s score will be higher. One system working as it should, in this instance, can actually improve the effectiveness of the other.
In summary, PPC and SEO teams should be working together towards a common goal: to drive not only more views to a company’s website, but to generate conversions as well. Isn’t it worth putting the entire strength of your marketing team behind one common goal instead of dividing them up?