You want to rank highly on Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs), and this makes sense — 93% of worldwide searches are conducted on Google, as are 96% of worldwide mobile device searches. Considering that over half of 16- to 64-year-olds are buying products online each week can translate to some serious revenue if you get your SEO and SEM strategies right.
So which is best — a strong paid search, PPC campaign, or robust organic SEO initiatives? Well, let’s hold on just a minute. Perhaps this idea of either-or is too simplistic. It might be better to take a more nuanced approach, considering the interplay between these two types of digital marketing. Read on to learn more about this as we examine how you can achieve great results when you pair organic search with paid advertising.
Leading with Organic Search
Let’s start with organic search. As you’re not paying for the clicks you receive from these organic campaigns, this will likely form the basis for your promotional and customer support initiatives. However, organic search does not exist in isolation — it can be used to inform and develop your paid search campaigns to drive better results. Here’s how this can work.
Building Keyword Understanding
Producing content for organic search is a good way to understand better the keywords you are working with. Examining your analytics will let you know which search terms brought traffic to your site and which terms resulted in user activity, such as conversions and subscriptions. Remember, when you use PPC advertising, you’re paying for each and every click, so it’s a good idea to get to know your searchers’ intentions and aims before you launch your ad.
Developing Your Content
You need content for both organic search and paid search advertising. Creating content for your organic SEO initiatives will help you understand what your users are engaging with, and you can use this insight as you build landing pages and other pieces of content for paid SEM campaigns.
Controlling Your Marketing Budget
Organic search is not strictly free — you’ll still need to invest time and effort into creating the content and optimising the page. However, you won’t pay for these results directly. Creating organic content in-house can help you generate traffic without having to pay for advertising, keeping your marketing budget at a manageable level.
Leading with Paid Search
Paid search advertising is always going to play a big role in your overall marketing. So far, we’ve looked at how organic search can support these paid campaigns, building a strong foundation for success with PPC and other ads, but what about vice versa? Here’s how you can lead with paid search, follow up with organic search campaigns, and achieve success across the board.
Hitting Trickier Keywords
In an ideal world, you’d create a piece of content with any focus keyword you like and start ranking for that keyword. In reality, however, it’s a little different — ranking organically for highly competitive search terms and phrases can be very difficult. This is where paid search advertising can pick up the slack, helping you maintain a SERP presence for these harder-to-rank-for terms.
Driving Other Channels
Your business needs traffic and interest from a range of different channels. While Google’s SERPS and other search engine pages represent important traffic sources, they are not the only options out there. Paid advertising can also drive engagement on other channels, such as social media platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram. This can be a reliable way to maximise the scope of your business’ promotions.
Rolling Out New Products and Promotions
An organic search campaign builds over time as your content develops strong ranking performance for certain keywords and phrases. In some instances, though, you need something a bit more immediate. If you’re bringing out a new product or promotion, you may not have time to build this organic performance, so you may choose instead to rely on the rapid strike of a paid campaign. PPC advertising can generate significant interest in your new products and promotions while you develop an organic campaign to accompany this.
Bringing It All Together
You can achieve big things from your online marketing with paid search campaigns that inform your organic strategy and organic initiatives supporting PPC and other ads. You just need to remain aware of the interplay between these two forms and deploy both side by side as you promote your business and grow your revenue.
To learn more about how this is done, contact our team today. Here at Impressive, we are ready to help push your digital marketing to the next level. Schedule your consultation and get your Free Marketing Plan from our experts.
