Ways SEO and PPC can work together to improve your digital performance

When the SEO and PPC teams are closely aligned and executing their strategies with full effect, this can be a richly rewarding and efficient way to improve your brand’s digital performance.

However, not all teams work together as closely as one might think. Often, each team is focusing on their space and not looking at the broader picture and how they can leverage each other’s strengths.

With this guide, we’re hoping to shed some light on areas that the PPC and SEO teams can work together, gain some magical insights learnings from one another other and boost performance overall.

1. Share PPC conversion data for your brand’s best-working titles and descriptions (ad copy)

The wonderful thing about the paid search team is that they have a tonne of data to draw from. This is very accurate information on how well your ad copy, and the keyworks used within them, are performing.

The SEO team does not have the luxury of this level of detail and must often rely on generic SEO tools that are not as accurate.

The SEO team should have visibility of the paid team’s ad copy data and use this to enhance their understanding of the keywords and phrases that are converting best for the brand.  Then, incorporate this information your pages’ meta data where necessary for the pages to perform better.

2. Work together to dominate the SERP with #1 organic listing and top paid result

Is there a keyword that you know will drive extremely relevant traffic to your site which you’d like to focus your efforts on targeting? Bid to be in top position and optimise your page for SEO so you’re as close to #1 organically – if done successfully, the likelihood that users click on your website listing is much, much higher.

This is easier said than done, of course. Your core keyword could have a very high cost-per-click and be very competitive to rank well organically, so work as a team to decide whether it’s worthwhile to target such a term.

If you’re worried about CPC and competitiveness, try targeting a longer-tail variation of your keyword that isn’t so tough to dominate the SERPs for. They can be as relevant and easier to attain, but will likely have a lower search volume overall. Weigh up the options and make the decision that’s best for you.

3. Use Keyword Planner for monthly search volume fluctuations

‘Gifts for her.’

Would you be surprised to hear that some SEO tools give the search volume of this as consistent throughout the year? This doesn’t make sense of course, because depending on the holidays, seasons and myriad other factors, search volume changes.

For example, the above term fetches an average of 115,000 searches/month in the UK, according to Ahrefs. This is the amount that will show up if you download a keyword report from them. However, when looking in tools that give monthly breakdowns, this figure changes drastically.

For example, using Ahrefs again, they now show a seasonal search volume in December 2020 for this keyword as almost 230,000 searches per month! That’s double what the tool tells us when we download a report.

The point is that some tools, like keyword planner, can help you get those helpful monthly search volume breakdowns that help you have a better understanding of the search landscape around the year.

SEOs may have access to keyword planner and so can find this data, but they may not use it as often if they’re accustomed to using other tools that allow them to do other aspects of their job better. The paid team will live and breathe keyword planner, so will likely be far more used to tapping into this data and optimising their campaigns with it.

Use keyword planner or another tool that has monthly volume breakdowns to inform yourself of the true monthly volume for a keyword, not just the generic volume that some tools give. This will help inform you of the right terms to target for your pages in the long-term.

4. SEOs to advise on CRO of pages to improve paid and organic performance

Does your page have a poor conversion rate in both organic and paid search? This should be taken seriously as making a slight improvement can bring notable improvements.

To fix this issue, the paid team should speak to the SEOs to get their insights on areas to improve the site’s conversion rate.

Typical CR improvements can come from actions such as making the CTAs more prominent and providing a better content experience (what does the customer truly want from your site and how can they get it with as little brainpower as possible?)

Also, think mobile first! That should always be the case, no matter what the device share is for your audience – this is because Google judges a website’s organic performance on mobile first and foremost.

5. Large increases in bids should be shared from paid to SEO team

When the big paid budget increase has been signed off (happy days!) and implemented, this could have ramifications on your organic traffic.

Depending on your bidding strategy, paid search could take some of the traffic that would typically have gone to organic, so let your SEO team know if you are planning on increasing bids so they know that traffic could be slightly affected.

6. SEOs to advise on pitfall terms (i.e. terms the PPCs should avoid)

Ever the experts on intent and language nuance, SEOs should advise the paid team if there are any keywords that they should avoid bidding on.

These can then be added into the negatives list so that the paid team do not eek away precious budget on keywords that simply are not relevant for them to bid on.

7. SEOs to advise when pages have their URLs changed for whatever reason

Sometimes SEOs will make a change to a page’s URL and not inform the paid team. Shocking, I know.

Avoid this circumstance by making it common practice to inform the paid team whenever such changes take place, providing them with the original URL and the destination page.

When they send people to a URL that is then redirected, this could lower the landing page experience as it would take longer for the person to arrive at the final URL.

It’s in Google’s interests that people arrive as quickly as possible to the page that they clicked on, so eliminating any unnecessary steps like this is beneficial to us.

8. Combat negative PR

Any business can come under some heat if they haven’t been providing their regular quality service to customers.

If this ever happens, then you can use a combination of SEO and PPC to combat any negative press that you are receiving.

With SEO, you can produce content for your site talking about your desire to improve your services and the fact you’re striving to be the best brand in the industry.

You could also focus on improving user reviews and showcasing these on your site. There are many ways to do this, but some simple methods are to be attentive to what users are saying in the reviews and replying to them where necessary. Growing your review score in Google My Business or Trustpilot also makes a difference.

With paid, you can add negative keywords around stories that you do not want your ad to trigger for.