A fairly common, and understandable, question digital marketers get is “Does PPC impact SEO and vice versa?”. The answer to this question is, technically, no. According to Google, “Advertising on Google has no impact on your organic or natural ranking in the search results; the two are completely separate.” PPC and SEO exist in their own silos and can run completely independently of each other. However, while they can run parallel to each other, there are also benefits of implementing an integrated approach.
Both PPC and SEO work toward a common goal of traffic, leads, and conversions. Here we will look at some of the ways that PPC and SEO can work together to further improve your digital marketing performance:
Higher Conversion and Engagement Rates
Some studies* have shown that searchers who have previously seen a site or brand via paid ads could be more likely to click and convert on an organic listing. When searchers have been exposed to a brand previously through paid ads, they also might be more likely to not only click on the organic listing but to engage and convert with that brand as well due to the brand association being stronger. This is also important because having a higher click-through rate and higher engagement can help lead to a higher ranking on the search engine results page, or the SERP. Lastly, having a professionally coded HVAC website design will assure visitors get the best overall experience.
Usually, when it is someone’s first time hearing about or seeing a new brand they are less likely to click, convert, and engage so having a way to improve your brand awareness can really help to improve your overall performance.
Traffic Increase
Having both options on the search engine results page also helps to increase overall traffic by taking up more real estate in the results. If you have put enough effort into your SEO and have built a PPC Campaign that has good visibility you can essentially double your SERP presence increasing your overall brand visibility and traffic.
Valuable Keyword Data
It will help you to gain valuable keyword insights. Using search terms found in your Google Ads account, you can fill in gaps for keywords that you might be missing in your SEO strategy. Additionally, the keyword data that one can get from a PPC campaign can be used to help create content and information around what people are actually searching. The opposite can be true as well because using SEO insights can help to find the highest performing keywords for your business which can help to make your PPC campaigns more successful.
More Comprehensive Targeting
By combining both SEO and PPC into your digital marketing, this gives the option of targeting users at all stages of the customer journey from research and comparison to purchase. Generally, SEO searches are more research-related whereas PPC focuses on keywords with higher commercial intent. If you’re using both, you can make sure that you’re targeting people throughout the buying process whether it be the research stage or the buying stage. This ensures that you are in front of the customer no matter what point of the buying funnel they are in.
Improved Quality Scores
Having an integrated approach can also help to improve your PPC campaign’s quality score and conversion rate . SEOs are generally in control of content and the landing page optimization for organic search. By creating landing pages that help to convert visitors into buyers, this helps the PPC team create ads that closely match the landing page; improving the overall user experience. Tying the landing page and ad copy together can also help to improve your quality scores which can help to improve your PPC performance.
Overall, it’s up to each business to decide which approach is best for them and what strategy best aligns with their goals, whether that be PPC or SEO or both. If you choose to go down the path of utilizing both tools, having an integrated approach can help you to get the most out of your campaign and generate even more impressive results.
* Incremental Clicks Impact Of Search Advertising
*How Google AdWords (PPC) Does and Doesn’t Affect Organic Results