5 Reasons to do SEO and PPC together

Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? But detailed studies have revealed that when sites appear in multiple positions (PPC and organic results) on search engines, traffic increases for both — when compared to results where only one appears.

It does make sense, though, when you realize that you’ve doubled the users awareness of your company, by taking up twice the “real estate” on the page.

PPC campaigns offer two powerful benefits: you can test an unlimited number of search terms, and you get the results of those tests in very short order. That provides invaluable data for your organic (SEO) campaign; without it, you often have to wait for months to see the results of a very limited number of search terms.

On the other side, SEO campaigns deliver a wide variety of “collateral traffic” to your site, from long-tail (more specific) search phrases that you didn’t know about. You can plug those terms into your PPC campaign, for increased results.

Once people have visited your site, you can deliver ads repeatedly to them, placed on other sites. This is called “remarketing,” and has proved to be one of the most effective techniques of PPC campaigns. By running your PPC and SEO campaigns simultaneously, you can remarket to organic (SEO) visitors as well as paid (PPC) visitors.

And remember, since remarketing campaigns can involve graphic ads, you brand your company and its associated images, as well as providing multiple exposures to your products and services. A classic win-win!

Both PPC and SEO require that you create and direct viewers to relevant, well-written content. With practice, you can make that content work equally well for each area.

By including elements like unique graphics and video on your pages, and wrapping it all in a pleasing, user-friendly layout, you can increase page-view time. For your PPC campaign, increased page-view time results in better placement for you listings, at a lower overall cost. On the SEO side, it also raises your rankings in the search results.

Clean code (the programming that makes up the pages) also counts. For one thing, it shortens page-load time, and also avoids any of the hangups that make search engines penalize your page by lowering your rankings.

The real key to successful online marketing — both SEO and PPC? It’s the ability to analyze the wealth of data to which you have access, and then using that analysis to continually modify your campaigns for improved results.

PPC and SEO provide similar but separate kinds of data. Cross-referencing that data gives marketing analysts a lot to work with. A really successful online marketing campaign starts off good, but constantly gets better. That’s the real power.