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Integrating Paid Search & SEO To Achieve Optimal Results

Sep 19 2023 | Acquisition, Market Insights, SEM

Every business owner has grappled with the SEO vs PPC debate while thinking of digital marketing strategies. Sadly, there is no absolute answer. However, recent marketing efforts have proven that the best solution to achieve optimal results is through an integration of paid search and search engine optimisation.

While SEO prepares your web pages to rank higher in organic search, PPC ads are a quicker way to attract traffic to your website. Both these methods have their own pros and cons, which is why you must learn how to harness their capabilities to the fullest through a healthy combination.

In this article, we’ll discuss the benefits of both SEO and paid search advertising and explore how to integrate these two search engine marketing strategies for optimal results.

What is SEO?

Search engine optimisation is the process of including content on your website that can make it appear more often in organic searches. Through on-page, off-page, and technical SEO, you can significantly increase your website’s visibility and search rankings.

SEO can include anything from having quality content, optimised URLs, link building, and keyword placements to improving the user experience and website loading times to earn brownie points from Google Search.

There are several benefits of using SEO to drive traffic:

Higher search rankings for targeted keywords drive brand awareness.
The visibility of your business improves, leading to higher engagement and conversions.
It builds brand value and, in turn, credibility and trust in customers.
SEO is highly versatile and can be strategised based on your business needs.
It generates trust signals in prospective customers through genuine user interactions and reviews.
It increases website traffic without any financial investment.
You get higher ROI and a sustainable marketing model.

Studies say that 53.3% of all website traffic comes from organic search. Hence, SEO is an important tool in your marketing funnel.

When to Use SEO

You should use SEO as your marketing strategy when:

You don’t have an ample marketing budget.
You need long-term, sustainable results.
You want to build brand value and search authority.
You need better ROI over time.
You want to create content tailored for your audience at different stages of the sales life cycle.
You have enough time to build traffic organically.

Basically, SEO is free but slow. In the long run, it does more for your brand value than paid campaigns, which we’ll discuss next.

What is Paid Search Advertising?

Paid search advertising is when a business pays a search engine to place its ads on relevant search engine result pages (SERPs). One of the most common paid search techniques is PPC (pay-per-click).

When you search for something, you may notice some results that come with the tag of “Ad”. These are the paid marketers on Google Ads. When you click a paid ad, you’re redirected to their landing page and the company is charged a predetermined amount by the search engine.

There are several aspects to paid search advertising:

You can bid on keywords or phrases related to your products and services.
Include ad extensions such as webpage links and contacts in your ad copy.
Google assigns quality scores to ads and determines their placement.
Consider factors like geotags, search terms, intent, competing ad copies, etc.

32% of companies use PPC to sell their product directly to customers. Paid search is a quick and easy way to drive traffic, generate leads, and boost conversions. Here’s when you should use paid search as a marketing strategy.

When To Use Paid Search Advertising?

You should use paid search advertising in the following situations:

You want instant results.
Your product is unique and virtually unknown to your target audience.
You need to promote specific offers and discounts that are time-bound, like a seasonal sale.
You’re seeking highly targeted traffic.
Your website is not optimised for the search engine.
You have an ample advertising budget to run a PPC campaign.

Search Engine Marketing = SEO + Paid Search Advertising

The best way to approach digital marketing is by combining SEO strategies with paid search campaigns. This creates holistic search engine marketing strategies that cover all aspects of reaching your target customers.

You can create a blended SEM strategy by:

Creating quality content on your website.
Optimising your landing pages.
Improving site structure and loading speed.
Feeding keywords and conversion data from PPC into organic search.
Combining overall SEO with targeted PPC in specific geographical areas and demographics.
Using high-performing keywords for organic search and unique keywords for paid campaigns.
Testing ad copies, landing pages, and keyword strategies organically.
Remarketing optimised content through retargeting and display advertising.
Gaining both organic and paid traffic for higher brand awareness.

For immediate results, start off with PPC while your organic traffic starts to build out. You can slowly ease out on your paid campaigns over time when your SEO starts showing results.

Key Takeaways

Depending on your available time, budget, and business requirements, you can combine SEO and paid search advertising to achieve optimal results.

SEO can be achieved through on-page, off-page, and technical efforts.
On-page SEO includes quality content, internal links, optimised headings, subheads, alt text, etc.
Off-page SEO includes link building, content marketing, social media marketing, guest posting, etc.
Technical SEO involves optimising your website for the search engine to crawl, improving user experience, loading times, and so on.
SEO works over time but leads to higher brand authority and free, organic traffic.
Paid search gives quicker and highly targeted results.
Starting off with a full-fledged paid search and building SEO over time is an ideal tactic for a new business.

Leveraging M&C Saatchi Performance for Search Engine Marketing

M&C Saatchi Performance has years of experience working as an SEM expert to drive effective PPC campaigns.

Use our expertise to build data-driven PPC ads that can convert your visitors into customers and secure qualified leads, resulting in higher ROI and stronger revenue strategies.

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