Overview
For years, search marketers have debated whether organic search or paid search was the better form of Google marketing. After years of bickering back and forth about which method is best, they finally reached a conclusion: both sides are equally good and work better together.
That is correct, because if you want to create a solid campaign, you need to integrate elements of your organic search and pay per click campaign into one big marketing campaign.
In this article we are going to show you how to combine these two search channels together to create the very best marketing strategy.
Organic Search and Paid Search – How to Combine Them:
#1 Improve your Click Through Ratio (CTR)
Moz.com reports that when you just do pay per click ads, the CTR is only around 18%. However, when you combine the ads and organic search results together the CTR goes up to 26%
That is because by using both strategies together, you provide additional ways for users to click through to your website. Essentially, you are monopolising more of the space for a specific keyword with this strategy.
Even better is that you can track this activity on Google Analytics to understand exactly which component of your campaign brings in the most conversions.
Google Analytics even has a tool called the Attribution model to make this process easy. The tool helps you compare the lead generation process of a visitor through multiple visits to your website.
This way you can examine which marketing strategy brought in more business.
#2 Shared keyword data
Improved conversions are definitely great. However, they are not the only benefit of combining PPC and SEO marketing together.
Another reason is the shared keyword data. For example, Go Digital Marketing discusses how pay per click ads can increase the number of visitors to your site for a low performing organic search term. We discuss this in more detail below.
Conversely, if you want to know whether you should put more effort into getting listed on a page for a specific keyword, PPC ads help you test the water.
#3 Use Best Performing PPC results for content creation
As we mentioned with the keyword data, PPC can help marketers decide which keywords to target for search engine optimisation. Pay per click ads are ideal determiners of what type of content will succeed and why.
For example, if your keyword is Australian coffee shops, you should determine whether the keyword works on paid search first.
Then if you start seeing results, create some type of content around that keyword: a blog post, video, infographic, podcast, etc. That way you can extend short term traffic into long-term search traffic.
You can repeat this process over and over again to drive more and more targeted traffic to your website. Google AdWords, Analytics, and Webmaster tools provide all the data you need to research top keywords for your website.
#4 Weather Algorithm Updates
Another crossover between organic and paid search is that they work in tandem to even out your traffic to your website.
Search traffic can be a terrific source of long-term traffic to your site. However, Google does update their algorithms every day. One slip of the rankings on Google can cost you months of traffic. By crossing over your paid and organic search strategy together, you have the opportunity to weather any algorithm storms Google provides on search.
Conversely, your Quality Score (QS) is vital to a paid campaign on Google AdWords. Quality Score is the way that Google determines how valid your ad is for a specific keyword and for your entire campaign.
As you can see from the WordStream graphic below, the difference between a QS of 10 and a QS of 1 can cost advertisers 3-4 times more for the lower QS score.
That is because Google rewards companies that have high click through ratios and relevant content for the ads they display.
If your QS drops for whatever reason, having that keyword rank on organic search can save you a lot of money over the long-term. Which is why we mentioned above how you should use paid keyword research to create more organic search content.
#5 Test Everything
One final thread exists between both search and paid traffic. You need to test everything. Both strategies require testing for you to be successful.
The benefit of using a PPC campaign is that it provides a lot more data than search does for traffic.
Therefore, ensure that you have a great campaign by connecting your AdWords campaign to Google Analytics. Then you can check to see how well your ad content performed on Google Analytics.
Simply click on the AdWords tab and then click campaign to see how well the ad content performed.
From there, you track post-click metrics like bounce rate, time on site, and pages per session to decide whether the ad is effective.
Lastly, you should also test the campaigns to see which landing pages provide the most conversions. Unbounce has a great guide on creating PPC landing pages to ensure the highest QS and conversion rates possible.
By running the campaign with PPC, you can speed up the process for determining the best keywords to rank organically. Then you can create a duplicate organically-optimised version of the landing page to start driving the organic traffic to that site.
Final Thoughts
It is time that Google marketers stop seeing either organic search or paid search as the most important marketing function. Instead, they need to integrate paid and organic search campaigns together.
For your business to succeed with search, you need to have them build each other. Over time, you can test your theories and develop better content because of the correlation between these two marketing strategies.
If you still have questions about the crossover between organic and paid search, feel free to contact Shout to set up a free introductory session to determine how we can help you use these strategies with your business.
