When trying to increase the visibility of your website online, there are typically two options that most marketing teams focus on – paid search and SEO.
Most organizations view these two digital marketing efforts as an either/or choice, and company budgets and priorities often reflect this reasoning. Often, this leads businesses to allocate the majority of their time and resources in one direction or the other. While they may see some initial success taking this approach, they often don’t realize the benefits they’re missing out on by not creating a synergized marketing initiative.
Below, we’ll cover the strengths of both paid search and SEO while also showing how your business can successfully blend these efforts together to improve your online visibility.
The Individual Strengths of Each Marketing Approach
The Power of Paid Search Ads
For most marketing professionals, paid search advertisements are all about speed and efficiency. Achieving both of these is incredibly important for most businesses, especially for smaller startup businesses looking to quickly establish a footprint in the market.
Paid search ads enable any business willing to pay for positioning to gain immediate visibility by securing high-value real estate on Google’s search results pages. This significantly increases your chances of getting noticed and allows you to target very specific, niche audiences and demographics, which in turn increases the likelihood of conversions.
These types of campaigns are also valuable when launching new products and services, helping brands to quickly test their reception in the market. Brands also have full control over ad copy, headlines, and calls to action, which can be beneficial when creating consistent public relations efforts.
The Foundational Strength of SEO
SEO has long been regarded as one of the best ways to ensure long-term site visibility over time. While it may not provide the faster results that paid search advertising can provide, this form of marketing helps to build a strong foundation of free organic web traffic.
When you focus your efforts on various SEO strategies, it helps to create a more credible and authoritative website, as you’re often continuously tweaking and improving the website for better crawlability and a more seamless user experience.
Another benefit of SEO is that, unlike paid search, you don’t need to continue funding your ability to get on the first page of search results. With the right strategies in place and enough patience, you can achieve these top spots without making significant financial investments.
Why Combine Both Paid and Organic Marketing Approaches?
Although some marketing teams may choose to focus on one approach or another, there are actually a number of benefits that come from a unified approach:
More Balanced Search Engine Results Page (SERP) Coverage
Search engine rankings are highly dynamic, and just because your SEO efforts led you to achieving top page results one day doesn’t mean it will happen the next. Leveraging both SEO and paid search advertisements together helps you to maintain more balanced SERP coverage over longer periods.
There is also a psychological element that comes into play for users when they see search results return both paid and organic listing placements. It can help bring more attention to your site and make it seem more reputable.
Improved Data Sharing and Insights
When you combine your paid search advertising campaigns with your SEO initiatives, you can leverage the data insights that each provides to improve the other. For example, when you run a temporary advertising campaign, you’re able to quickly see which keywords are most likely to lead to conversions.
Taking this approach actually helps you to get better management over your budget and lets you focus on more cost-effective keywords as you move forward.
Filling Gaps and Accelerating Results
Unfortunately, many SEO campaigns can take some time before they show tangible results. However, this doesn’t mean you can’t still leverage paid search advertising to help fill visibility gaps and accelerate your marketing results.
For example, if you were marketing a restaurant and wanted to advertise a new location or enhanced menu, running a quick paid advertisement campaign may be a better solution than running a large SEO campaign. You can then put your budget into other, more essential areas.
Practical Strategies for Integrating Paid Search Ads and SEO
Keyword Alignment
To help keep your paid and organic search efforts in alignment, the first thing you should do is make sure they’re targeting the right keywords.
It’s a good practice to set aside enough room in your budget to discover and track higher-value keywords that have a high likelihood of conversion, and utilize them in both your paid search ads and your web content.
You can then use your advertising data to help discover more long-tail keywords to start focusing on as you move forward.
Optimized Landing Pages
Your content should serve dual purposes when launching different marketing campaigns. Having a well-written blog post not only helps you to rank organically for certain keywords, but it can also serve as the perfect landing page for a targeted ad campaign.
Always match your message to what the users are actually looking for with their searches. Try to keep in mind the actual intent associated with each keyword and use this to your advantage when formatting landing pages appropriately.
Strategic Budget Allocation
Treat your budget as flexible, not fixed. A smart strategy means shifting funds between paid ads and SEO based on performance. You can invest heavily in ads to get traction for a tough keyword, then reduce that spend as your organic ranking improves.
This approach works really well when tracking seasonal trends. You can use your ad budget to help capture peak demands during busy months, while having a consistent SEO strategy will start providing you with stable, year-round traffic.
Start Maximizing Your Results
It’s important not to view your paid search and SEO campaigns as two different approaches. When blended together in the right ways, it can help you to increase your online visibility and maximize your conversion rates. By following the strategies discussed, you’ll create a better balance between both approaches and increase the positive results you achieve.
Author Bio:
Chris Bretschger, Managing Partner at Bastion Agency, is a seasoned marketer with over 20 years of experience in integrated marketing. He has developed brand strategies, managed media campaigns, and built analytics tools for clients like Mazda, Adidas, Jenny Craig, and Kia. When not leading Bastion, Chris enjoys superyacht regatta racing on the open seas.