The ideal balance between Paid Search and SEO activity can often be hard to achieve when different activities are operating in silo. There are many ways SEO and Paid Search can work together, both in data sharing and building effective strategies to increase visibility and efficiency.
In this blog article, we’ll detail some of the many ways brands can utilise their Paid Search insights and capabilities to indirectly enhance performance in their Organic listings.
Brand Share of Voice Protection
Many brands experience competitors bidding on their brand terms. As a result, you will often see competitors ads appear above your own Organic result. It’s often been found that the top position in the SERP will have an average CTR of 32%, as a result it’s vital you protect your brand by reclaiming this space. Running brand activity can be an effective strategy in increasing your share of voice in branded search results. The good news is that it’s likely with effective bidding management that CPCs will be low and CVR will be high, therefore driving efficiency.
Sharing Keyword Insights Cross Channel
Another way Paid Search can enhance Organic activity is through keyword insights. In Paid Search we target users using keywords based on relevant searches for campaigns and ad group. There are a number of ways Organic can utilise this data.
Firstly, identifying the keywords driving the most volume can then feed into SEO’s content priorities. If certain keywords are getting a lot of traffic through Paid Search, this would suggest that this is an area of interest for consumers. Through a content gap analysis, SEO can identify if there are opportunities to use these insights and implement these keywords into meta data and on-site content.
In addition, if there are keywords which have poor visibility through Organic, we can try and push these more in Paid Search by applying higher bids. Therefore, increasing our presence in this area.
Lastly, but not least, depending on the relevancy to the campaign structure, Paid Search can also facilitate testing keywords that SEO are interested in building content for. By doing so, we can gather information on CTR and search volume, therefore saving the SEO team time and focusing their resources on areas where they’ll see the biggest benefit.
All of the above will ultimately lead to the discovery of additional relevant coverage for both channels to achieve a multi-disciplinary approach.
PPC and SEO Cross Channel Testing
There are a number of tests we can conduct in Paid Search which will benefit SEO.
Often in Paid Search we test different ad copy messaging against each other to find which messaging results in the strongest click engagement. This insight can then be used when optimising on-site content and meta data. By using messaging which has the strongest click engagement, this can result in an uplift in Organic traffic. As Responsive Search Ads are becoming more prevalent and are therefore often receiving the most volume compared to Expanded Text Ads, these can be another powerful tool to assess copy for use in meta descriptions and titles. Therefore, by unifying our channels we can work together to improve CTR and create more cohesive messaging which will ultimately creating a more consistent user experience.
Another common test in Paid Search is landing page tests. This is where we compare 2 different pages on site against each other to evaluate which results in the strongest CTR. If we frequently find one page has a high bounce rate and a low conversion rate, this may suggest this page needs optimisation from an SEO perspective. This can therefore improve the overall experience a user has on site.
Brand switch off tests can also be a popular cross channel experiment to run, albeit are quite specialist as they require a significant amount of data, spend and Media Science resource. By evaluating what impact switching off Brand paid coverage has on your overall share of voice and conversions, you can evaluate whether this budget could be more efficiently allocated.
Sharing Audience Insights
In Paid Search we have a breadth of insights from the activity we run, including, but not limited to, audience insights. There are many different types of audiences we can overlay onto campaigns. This includes remarketing, life events, in-market and affinity. Overlaying these audiences can be very effective in gaining a greater understanding about the different interests of your typical consumer.
Although this isn’t as in depth as a complex audience persona framework, it can be effective in understanding how to frame your content. For example, having this understanding of your consumer’s different interests and how you can link this to your brand’s offering can be useful for creating content such as blog creation. This can therefore result in your blog’s Organic listing being present for consumer’s micro-moments, resulting in a connection being formed.
Site Migrations – Working Effectively Across Channel
The word “migration” may be quite triggering for Technical SEOs, as the importance of SEO elements such as redirecting legacy URLs to the new URLs can often be overlooked. When this happens, there is a tough pill to swallow for the client in the form of catastrophic drops in organic traffic. Even with the most perfectly executed migration there is always some risk of initial traffic loss.
Something that Technical SEOs can do to minimise the risk/impact of drops in organic traffic is to work with the PPC team on a contingency plan. SEO can provide a list of priority keywords and pages to share with the Paid Search team, that can be upweighted when the new site launches. This can help to mitigate traffic drops from key searches should there be any issues.
Summary
There are many ways SEO and Paid Search can collaborate. By working together, we can create a consistent brand image and effective strategies. Truly collaborating across channel will lead to teams exceeding business goals by delivering exceptional user experiences.
If you’re interested in reading into the reverse, how Technical SEO can assist Paid Search, check out our first part to this series.
Creating an effective Total Search strategy is becoming more and more important as the user journey becomes more complex.
If you’re interested in finding out more about how we can assist your brand with this, please get in touch today!
Or, in the meantime, read our whitepaper on how to deliver a valuable customer experience through Total Search.
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