There are various three-letter acronyms with which many members of the public are immediately familiar: think the likes of BBC, FSB and – an especially topical one, this one – WFH (working from home). PPC and SEO are less well-known acronyms but carry significant weight in digital marketing.
PPC is Pay Per Click, online advertising you pay for, while SEO is Search Engine Optimisation – and the two can make surprisingly effective tag team partners, as these points demonstrate…
You can get extra chances to catch attention
Let’s assume you’ve done all of the right things on the SEO side, like publishing well-written web copy and blog posts and amassing backlinks from respected websites – and, as a result, your site now regularly ranks highly on relevant SERPs (search engine results pages).
After all of this, you could also invest in PPC advertising so that your site gets yet another placing on those SERPs – this time in the section reserved for paid ads.
You can learn which keywords generate the most conversions
Keywords remain a major piece of the SEO puzzle, but you do need to be selective about exactly which keywords you insert into your written copy. You need to know which keywords are likeliest prompt the sought-for responses – like clicks – from your target audience.
You can ascertain what those keywords are by optimising your PPC campaigns for them. You could then use the best-performing keywords of those campaigns in your SEO content, too.
You can also learn more about your potential customers
How people respond to your PPC ads can tell you a lot about what makes those people tick. With this in mind, you could target a PPC campaign at a very specific group – such as, say, iPhone users living in Newcastle. The keywords “iPhone” and “Newcastle” would naturally be included in the ads.
As you see how these ads are received, you could also realise ways to adjust your SEO campaigns to suit, enabling you to better push the buttons of people especially inclined to buy from you.
PPC and SEO can each play parts in reputation management
If your brand is hit with a scandal, such as a product disaster, you could create PPC ads and SEO content specifically for anyone who will search online for details about the negative story.
That way, their search could bring up content of your own explaining how your company is making amends for the debacle. This messaging could help you to smooth over the PR damage.
PPC can attract users to your site, while SEO can keep them there
While PPC can be great for drawing attention to a brand that has only just launched and so lacks any established online presence, PPC’s effectiveness can be hamstrung by your budget. If your business suffered a financial crisis, what few online listings the brand had could quickly disappear.
As SEO garners web traffic more organically, it is more cost-effective and therefore more resilient to such economic shocks – especially if you opt for a bespoke web marketing package.