How to Combine Paid Search and SEO for Better Results
Paid search and SEO have different approaches toward getting visitors to open your site.
The first can be costly but result in immediate success.
The latter is cheap or at no cost but takes a while to impact your website’s rankings on search engines.
That being said, both are highly important if you want your website to succeed.
Most marketers manage or implement these two approaches separately, or exclude one from their strategies.
However, the latest trend has yielded much success and that is, mixing the two approaches together for more effect.
‘’It is the obvious choice.’’ – says Brian Torres, content writer for ResumesPlanet.
‘’Since both are effective and rely on keywords, it is only natural to combine them.’’
Comparing Paid Search and Search Engine Optimization
Paid search is often the very opposite to what SEO does.
Ultimately, they both aim toward the same goal, which is driving traffic toward your site.
Both ways have their own specific limitations, ways and advantages. This is why the right combo of the two is the greatest method you can test.
While SEO tactics require time to start influencing the audience, paid searches are proven to provide faster results.
This is where paid searches win over SEO.
However, for such results, you’d have to pay a fortune for paid searches, while SEO comes at a low or no cost at all. To avoid enormous costs and still get fast results, you need to combine the two.
How to Combine SEO and PPC
Thankfully, both methods have one basic source for their functioning – keywords. This is the middle ground you must start with to combine them smartly.
#1 Start With Keyword Expansion
To be able to improve a strategy, you must evaluate it first. In this sense, it is essential to evaluate the status and use of keywords.
This should give you an insight into which phrases and keywords are driving traffic to the website.
For this particular purpose, we suggest that you use Google Webmaster Tools or Google Analytics.
If the keywords your search comes up with aren’t added to your paid search campaign, take this immediate step.
The process has another starting point. The second way to expand and utilize keywords is by starting from PPC and moving toward SEO.
Figure out the keywords with the highest converting rate in your paid search campaign. Analyzing these will tell you what to include in your website content for higher organic ranking.
Finally, use the AdWords tools to see if the traffic you invite to your website is worthy of the investment for PPC.
If this is a worthy investment, then the change in strategy is something you must do.
#2 Test Different Content Strategies
We all know that content is king. However, just writing content related to your website niche doesn’t make for a good content strategy.
Before you gather keywords and start creating content, test out those keywords with paid search.
This is the biggest benefit from combining both – that you can gather information from one and utilize it to improve the other.
If your keywords yield success in paid search, use them in your content, too. Otherwise, you might want to look for other keywords.
Remember that SEO often takes time to generate good results, but it is definitely worth the wait.
So, even if the keywords don’t work right away with your content, don’t give up on them. If they tested well with paid search, they will succeed in the end.
The greatest thing here is, you don’t have to wait for the SEO results to know if you are on the right path.
PPC will tell you what you need to know fast and won’t let you go wrong with SEO.
#3 Use the Best-Performing Paid Search Ad Copy
Find the ads that performed best and apply the same headlines into the content’s meta descriptions and title tags.
Do it both ways – take a copy from the most visited content on your website and apply the headings to the paid ads.
This should boost both your strategies and help you eliminate the things that simply don’t work.
#4 Link Product Pages to Your Ads
Google has changed a lot in terms of e-commerce, which is great news for marketers.
You now have the opportunity to link product pages to ads.
The ads will use reviews and other short content to feature the product, and the people who see it will be directly taken to the product page. This is where they can make the purchase.
It is a great way to combine both in a way that customers will see both your SEO and PPC efforts.
#5 Be Visible on Social Media
Social media is only going upwards in the technology world.
It changes dramatically, one part of this being the advertising opportunities for marketers.
If you keep track of the trends in social media and leverage these to your benefit, you can increase traffic greatly.
Sites like YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn allow you to serve up targeted ads and reach the specific group of people you want to get to your website.
This group of people is often using social media, so this might just be the surest way to get to them.
#6 Fight Off Negative PR
Look at SEO and PPR as two joined forces that are stronger together.
As such, you can use them as a weapon against negative PR in addition to joining them to improve your strategy.
When combined, these can be the greatest tool for damage control you have.
Don’t be afraid of negative PR. When there’s negative PR, guide the conversation by controlling both. You can do this by focusing on a certain term to tell your side of the story.
One such example occurred during the Gulf of spill. BP paid for ads that focused on the keyword ‘oil spill’.
These ads linked to a page talking about BC’s cleanup efforts and success, which made them rank highest in the search engine list when people looked for that keyword.
#7 Combine the Paid with the Best Organic Links
Experts believe that people are more willing to click on a paid link if you list your organic link there, too.
If you aren’t located on the first page of SERPs, no paid ad strategy can bring you the results that you want.
Therefore, it is time to make a tandem of your best organic links with the paid links to get more clicks.
#8 Search and Find Your Competition
Use Pay per Click reports to see who your competition is.
Once you do, you might find results that will surprise you.
Many times, the biggest competition are those who you never considered being as great as you.
Their approach simply worked better, so you might learn something from them if you find and follow their moves.
Have you tried any of these strategies before? If you haven’t joined paid search and SEO by now, it is time to utilize their strength and connection to improve both.
These eight approaches will help you improve all your efforts in regard to your site, as well as gain insights into how to move your business forward.
About the Author
Warren Fowler is a marketing enthusiast and a blogger at Resumes Planet, who loves music. If he doesn’t have a guitar in his hands, he’s probably embracing new technologies and marketing techniques online! You can meet him on Twitter and Facebook.