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PPC and SEO: Think Holistic
By Mike Murray | May 30, 2007
Successful search engine marketing involves sharing - one of your first lessons as a young person. You just can’t keep the good toys to yourself.
It just doesn’t make sense for search engine optimization (SEO) and paid search experts to work in separate worlds.
Although SEO and paid search (also known as pay-per-click or PPC) have unique disciplines, they also have a lot in common. Specialists in these areas can help themselves and their companies (or clients) if they learn to connect as often as needed.
They can talk about ad headlines and how those might work well with page titles. Ad copy may translate well into a meta description or inspire some content on a regular page someone is optimizing.
Keyword research can be shared initially and on an ongoing basis. Different experts have different tools they like to use to develop keywords and/or phrases. Take the time to compare what you’ve learned. Search behavior data provides useful insights.
Marketers do run into problems with landing pages. What works for paid search may not go over so well for natural search engine optimization. The way the information is displayed for paid search could actually have a negative impact on existing natural rankings. However, paid search often works with newly created pages. An SEO specialist should keep an open mind about the purpose of the page and the calls to action to determine if the new page can support an overall SEO campaign if integrated into the website architecture.
SEO and PPC experts have plenty to talk about, including coming up with a trigger about when (or if) to pause an ad. What organic ranking must be achieved before the decision takes effect? Is it #1, #2, #3? Can you have a paid ad and a #1 natural ranking? Can you afford it? It all depends on the search term, analytics, conversions and the budget.
If you’d like to know more about how PPC and SEO can best work together, check out our new complimentary guide.
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