The two biggest sources of traffic when it comes to online marketing is search engine optimization and pay-per-click. One, SEO, attracts organic traffic, which many consider to be “free” traffic, which it essentially isn’t but I’m not here to debate that now. The second, PPC, is when you pay a set price per click, from users you target based on interests, location or where they are browsing.
Many people are either team SEO or team PPC, and it really shouldn’t be that way at all.
While organic traffic isn’t billed per visitor, so to say, you still have large costs associated with all of the different SEO components. This includes content, links, and even the software and tools to help you identify link opportunities and perform outreach. When you really break it down, there is a cost you can assign to each visitor.
PPC, on the other hand is charged per visitor, and because of the data you are able to gather and track, it’s a great source of information that you can use to help improve your search engine optimization. There isn’t anything more measurable than PPC, whether it’s Google AdWords or Facebook ads.
It’s time for people to stop the senseless arguing over what is better and come to the realization that you need both SEO and PPC to really experience growth. While many of the PPC vs. SEO debate articles found online are simply click-bait, there are many people that actually pick a side and stick to it. This is crazy — all you do is miss out on opportunities, which hurts your business.
You need both, and each plays hand-in-hand, when you really break them down. In fact, there are several ways PPC knowledge (and data) can drastically improve your SEO results, which I am going to breakdown and explain below.
Use the PPC advice below to help improve your SEO results..
You must always optimize and make changes — you cannot remain stagnant.
With PPC, you always have to monitor your campaigns and make changes, sometimes by the hour. This includes bids, copy and offers. If you don’t constantly optimize you will see your budget depleted and zero results to show for the ad spend.
With SEO, it’s more of a long play, and you aren’t going to make changes on a daily basis, but you do need to take the same mentality. A lot of people shy away from pay-per-click because of the constant “babysitting” the campaigns need in order to be successful, but they mistakenly assume that SEO is a “set it and forget it” strategy, which isn’t the case at all.
There are several parts of your SEO campaign that you should constantly be working on. These include:
- Link acquisition: If you aren’t constantly building new links to the pages you are currently ranking for or trying to bump up in the SERPs then you are going to lose. Competition, both old and new will fly past you if you aren’t constantly linking to your website.
- Content publication: You can’t only post content when you want to target a new term or keyword, because this strategy will create an inconsistent publication schedule. Adding new content all the time tells Google that your website is an information source, which can help improve its authority.
- Inner-linking: Linking your content together not only helps to keep your visitors on your website longer and helps you control their navigational journey, but it can also pass link juice to other pages you want to bump up in the SERPs.
- On-page optimization: Sometimes the smallest on-page change can trigger drastic changes in the SERPs. I have seen little adjustments such as adding a keyword in H2 tag on the top of the page or writing more descriptive alt-image tags move the needle in a matter of days. But, you will never know this unless you are always trying new on-page optimization techniques. Test, monitor, analyze, and repeat.
- Conversion optimization: Many people seem to forget there are two major pieces that make up the SEO puzzle, and that is attracting traffic and then converting traffic. You could have top rankings and a never-ending supply of traffic, but if that traffic isn’t converting into leads or sales that generate revenue for your business, then all the attraction work is wasted effort. You need to always split-test different offers, layouts, etc. Unless you are converting 100% of your traffic there is room for improvement.
You should always be sending traffic to offer-specific dedicated landing pages.
With PPC, and specifically Google AdWords, you need to make sure your keywords, ad copy and landing page are all relevant in order to achieve a high QS (quality score). The higher your score, the more impressions your ad will receive and the lower your cost-per-click (CPC) will be.
It’s very advantageous to spend time on this in order to get more traffic and spend less, but it also helps convert more traffic. If someone performs a Google search for “Blue widgets” and then sees an ad with that keyword in the title and then also the ad copy mentions the specific “blue widget” they are searching for it’s going to help attract that click. After all, they are looking for that specific item. Now, if they are sent to a landing page that presents them with an attractive offer to purchase that specific item there is a good chance they will convert and complete the purchase process.
Now, if they performed the same search and saw the same ad, but then were sent to a landing page that had several categories and items, with one being what they are looking for, the odds of them converting decreases significantly. If you give them too many options and don’t direct the conversion path you will see a lot of traffic bounce off.
The same thinking needs to be applied to organic search strategies. If you have high rankings and your page titles and descriptions are highly related, as they should be, then you need to make sure you are sending that traffic to a landing page that gives the user exactly what it is they are seeking.
A lot of people don’t pay attention to this, as they consider traffic generated via SEO to be “free,” so what I suggest is that you start to attach a price of each visitor, which will light a fire under you in terms of conversion optimization. Never assume your traffic will find what they are after on their own. You need to place it right in front of them.
Use highly measurable data to build your strategy and campaigns around.
The most appealing thing about PPC is how measurable it is. You know what you are paying for each visitor, what it costs per conversion, and how much profit you are left with after each sale. You can then make changes to lower those costs and increase your profit margin, and then when you find the winning combo you can slowly ramp up, and as long as there is enough traffic available, you can scale as high as your ad budget allows.
Most successful PPC campaigns dive deep in their data, both on the ad platform they are using as well as their Google Analytics. This helps them to quickly identify areas that are not working and need to be eliminated in order to conserve ad spend, and ramp up what is working, in order to provide a healthier ROI.
Your SEO strategy requires the same analytical-focused approach, because the faster you can make moves to steer the campaign in the right direction (into a positive ROI), the faster you can snowball your efforts.
You see, when you are able to generate more sales, it typically gives you access to more capital, which then allows you to get more aggressive when it comes to SEO. You can buy more links, have a variety of content assets created, and spread a wider net.
One of the reasons I write these blog posts are to help my audience — clients and non-clients alike — learn SEO. A lot of people sign up for a service from an agency and never look under the hood themselves. While a good agency will do their best, the results can be amplified if you simply learn how to read, understand, and analyze your data.
After all, you know your business. You know who your customer is. You know what and when they should be buying. If an SEO agency is saying, “Hey, we drove 10,000 visitors to your website last month” but the sales were not there, then you need to figure out why and make applicable changes to complement their traffic generation.
Are they driving the wrong type of visitor that has no intent to purchase? Are the keywords and search terms pulling traffic in not really relevant to what you are selling? Sometimes only you have the answers to these questions.
ABT: always be testing.
There are two types of Facebook advertising groups — those that absolutely crush it and generate 3-10X returns on their ad spend, and then those that blow through their entire budget in a matter of hours and generate zero spend, resulting in a 100% loss.
What is the differentiator between the two?
Testing.
The businesses that are now successful with Facebook ads (or any PPC platform) have tested over and over, and in the beginning they more than likely experienced some unfavorable losses. But they stuck with it and continued to learn and test, to the point where they found out what worked for their business.
There are dozens of PPC courses and e-learning materials to buy, but until you actually test with real traffic and your particular offers, you will never have a base to build from. It takes work; plain and simple.
The same is true with SEO.
Just because some SEO blogger says that a few authority links and a 1,800-word blog post is all you need, it doesn’t guarantee you will even become a blip on Google’s radar in the SERPs. Every industry and location is different.
You have to always test new SEO strategies and be willing to invest your time in self-education if you are going to tackle it yourself, or make sure to hire an agency that considers you more of a partner than a number. Cookie-cutter campaigns will never perform at full potential.
Your copy (titles and meta descriptions) is most-responsible for attracting qualified clicks.
When it comes to PPC, the ad copy is what entices the click. Since you can position your ads on the very top of Google, provided you are willing to bid the highest, you will undoubtedly be seen by everyone that searches for the keywords you target. If your ad copy (title and description) are non-compelling and nobody clicks on your ads, then your CTR (click-through-rate) plummets and your impressions drop and your CPC (cost-per-click) increases.
This makes optimizing and testing so important, and the same thing applies to SEO in terms of your titles and meta descriptions. While you need to satisfy Google (only the title — Google’s algorithm doesn’t factor in the meta description text), you need to write them in a way that they grab attention and draw the click quickly.
Most business owners and SEO agencies focus on rankings in the SERPs, but a more effective strategy would be focusing on click-through rates for particular keywords and pages, which can all be found in the Google Search Console dashboard.
If you notice that a particular page is receiving a lot of impressions, that is a clear sign that Google considers it to be high-quality, but if your clicks are low, then it’s just not connecting with the people searching for that particular keyword.
Try changing the title to be more directly relevant to what’s being searched and use the meta description to craft a call-to-action with an offer that can’t be refused. Now, pay attention to the particular page(s) in your Search Console and see if the click-through rates increase. It will often take several changes to find one that pulls a high percent, so don’t get discouraged if you don’t experience instant improvement.
Conclusion
In order to thrive online you need to master every aspect, and I’m not even just talking about SEO and PPC. You need to mix in social media, email marketing, display ads, etc. This not only gives you more branding reach, but it also avoids becoming a victim of having all of your eggs in one basket.
Google could roll out an update that makes your organic rankings disappear overnight. The cost for Facebook ads could continue to increase to the point they aren’t profitable for your particular product or service. There are a lot of things that could happen that are completely out of your control.
The tips I broke down above are ways you can improve your SEO by specifically using findings and data from your PPC efforts. If you aren’t running paid traffic, then now is the time to start. Not only can it help your business scale at a much faster rate, but it gives you access to information that can help improve your SEO.
What are some things you have learned from combining different marketing platforms? Do you agree that PPC data and information can be utilized in a way that improves search engine optimization? Let me know what you think in the comments section below.
