How To Combine PPC and SEO Synergies

SEO and Google Search Ads have so many synergies and data that can be utilized to drive growth for both marketing strategies. However, this data isn’t always shared to support the other program.

There is a reason for this, each marketing strategy requires a specialized skill set, and often are managed by separate individuals and teams (SEOs and Paid Search Marketers).

Efficiencies Between the Two Channels

When we can get paid search and SEO together to share key insights, both parties will benefit. Within this blog post, I’ll share several synergies search engine marketers can leverage to drive more results through Google just by sharing a few pieces of data.

Google Search Console for Google Search Keyword Mining

Often when advertisers decide to start adverting with Google Ads, the Google Search Ads marketer will do their own research of keywords to target, via Google Keyword Planner Tool. What I find is they rarely jump into Google Search Console, which holds a treasure trove of awesome search queries to potentially target through paid ads.

Google Search Console will report the exact search queries users are typing before they go to your website.

I strongly recommend that the search ads manager get access to Google Search Console to identify highly relevant keywords to target via Paid, especially for keywords that have high intent, but the organic positioning is relatively low.

Below is an example screenshot from Google Search Console, where you can identify search queries to potentially target through Paid Search. My recommendation is to revisit these reports every few months, just to see if there are any keywords in your PPC program you can expand upon.

This report is also very helpful for new products/services, where you may not know exactly how users are searching. Additionally, as we migrate more into voice search and search queries are getting longer (as users are speaking the search vs. typing), this report will give insights into how users are searching so you can maintain a presence.

Google Search Ads Keyword Data for SEO Targeting

With Google Search Ads, you can quickly test keywords with a flip of a switch. If you’re unsure which keywords to optimize your site, consider testing a variety of keywords through Google Search Ads. Put a sufficient budget against this test (example: drive at least 100 – 150 clicks per keyword theme), and see how each of these themes of keywords perform.

You’ll likely find some keywords that will have a high conversion rate. Once you’ve identified these keywords, pass this to the SEO marketer for optimization. This way you’re focusing your efforts on search queries that have the best chance to drive the business outcome, vs. keywords that can drive traffic, but not as many conversions.

This might be a worthwhile investment as SEO takes time. Changes you make to your site may not have an impact until 4-8 weeks down the road. It’s since SEO is a time-consuming nature, it’s best to focus on the specific search queries you want to optimize for, which could save you a considerable amount of time down the road.

Ad Copy Testing for Meta Descriptions

To drive higher click through rates (CTR’s) from your organic traffic, you’ll want to customize your meta description to showcase your value and include a call to action to pique the users’ interest.

If you don’t add in a meta description (screenshot below), Google will insert language from the landing page. This is OK, but even better if you can customize to include language you know will resonate with your audience.

Instead of just guessing which meta copy you should have in your meta description, leverage your Google ad performance reporting to drive the best click-through rate. I’ll explain how:

Within Google Ads, open up a recent ad report (90 days of data), and look at your top-performing ads. You’ll likely identify ad copy that seems to resonate and yield the highest click-through rates. Once you’ve identified the common messaging that is driving a high click-through rate, incorporate this within your organic meta descriptions. For example, maybe it’s an offer, or a main selling proposition or benefit. Whatever language seems to work, let’s use that for SEO.

The benefit of this more organic traffic from higher click through rates. Beyond this, this could positively increase your organic ranking on Google over time. If Google is seeing that your organic listings are experiencing a strong CTR relative to your competition, it may continue to move you up the ranking, as you’re showing value to the end-user, through a strong click-through rate.

Cutting Ad Spend

While Google Search ads work very well, you need to be mindful of your organic ranking for specific keywords as there could be keywords where you might be paying for traffic, but may not necessarily need to.

For example, many advertisers pay for traffic on their branded terms. This often makes sense, especially if other competitors are bidding on your brand. However, if there are no competitors bidding on your brand and you own the top organic positioning, you should save this PPC (pay per click) budget and reallocate to keywords where your organic presence is relatively low.

How About You?

The above are some of the general PPC – SEO synergies that we find value, but I would love to hear from you! Comment below on other PPC – SEO synergies that you typically partake in.