If you have a marketing budget, you may wonder whether it is best to spend your money on PPC advertising or to improve your SEO.
Although both may have different purposes, they can be used together to improve your presence in the search engine results and encourage people to visit you.
How can you make the most of both strategies? Here are three ways you can get the best of both worlds when it comes to PPC and SEO.
What is SEO, and what is PPC?
Pay per click advertising (PPC) is when you use paid platforms like Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising to show your ads at the top of the search engines.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is when you optimize your website content so it organically appears as high in the search engines as possible. For example, you may look at adding particular keywords to your web pages, or encouraging other websites to link to yours.
Use SEO to play the long game and PPC to play the short game
SEO is an excellent way of getting your website to the top of the search engines, but it takes time. It generally takes about six months for changes you make to take effect.
On the other hand, PPC allows you to automatically get to the top of the search engine results as long as you are willing to pay for the privilege.
This means you can use both marketing strategies to your advantage. Use PPC in the short term to get eyes on your page. After a while, SEO will take effect, and organic traffic will start to roll in.
Use PPC to power your SEO strategy
PPC can provide you with a wealth of data that you can use to determine what prospective customers want to see on your website.
For example, take a look at your search terms report to see what people are looking for. If there are a lot of people searching for specific search terms, you can look at adding new content to your website.
Use SEO to get people to your site, and PPC to bring them back
Remarketing is a great strategy that incorporates both SEO and PPC.
It works like this. You write great SEO-optimized content that gets visitors to your website. You then set up a remarketing strategy on your PPC channel of choice to serve a display ad to visitors, reminding them of your site. This encourages them to come back to your site and convert.
Most people won't convert on your website on the first attempt. In fact, according to HubSpot, customers go through nine points of contact before they eventually make a purchase. Remarketing will help get prospective customers back to your site sooner.
In conclusion, you don't have to choose one over the other. Implementing a strong PPC and SEO strategy into your marketing mix will help your business become more efficient, and result in a better return on investment.