Integrating SEO & PPC
19 May, 2008
Vinod Nambiar, Director, Global Delivery, Position2This article discusses how one can integrate SEO and PPC to improve effectiveness of a search marketing program. It starts by understanding user behaviour & perceptions that form the basis of this strategy and goes on to share a few best practices.
SEO or PPC?
As a practitioner in the search engine marketing industry we are frequently asked questions on which activity is more effective. And our answer, like most consultants, is “it depends.” There is no silver bullet, the objectives and market conditions define what will be more effective. One can accurately refer to the analogy of Advertising and PR, in the offline world.
Understanding user behaviour
The figure here is what is known as a heat map. It describes areas where user attention is more focussed in a search results page of Google. It clearly shows how natural results get more attention compared to sponsored (PPC) ads to the right. This is attributed to the fact that users subconsciously “trust” the search engine to display unbiased list of sites that’s relevant to the searched key phrase as part of natural results.
The challenge for PPC advertisers is to grab the attention of the user. This includes techniques like using dynamically inserted keywords in ads, as the searched keyphrase is displayed as BOLD text. Google also randomly displays PPC results on the top of the page in an attempt to increase clicks for advertisers!
User perception of Natural (SEO) & and paid (PPC) results in a page
In SEO, pages are displayed by the search engine based on a variety of factors commonly known as the Search Engine algorithm. The link that is displayed is based on what the search engine thinks is relevant from the millions of pages on the web. It also decides which particular page to display from among multiple pages in the site. Thus, having your site high up in natural results helps in building the “brand value” of the site. This reputation has been built over the years by Google, which prides itself in being unbiased.
In PPC results are ranked based on how much marketer is ready to pay (an auction model). In PPC, marketers have complete control on keywords that are used, the ad that is shown, and the page where the ad will lead to. This gives marketers the ability to control the full cycle of what we know as A-I-D-A (Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action) in marketing parlance. This is an ideal situation for marketers, as they retain the ability to control the behaviour of the target audience, unlike organic SEO. In PPC, users react positively as long as the message resonates with what they were searching for.
Integrating SEO & PPC
Simply put, it’s like having brand marketing and tactical advertising on the same page. Having a listing in the organic results part builds credibility and PPC is where the marketer can use relevant ads to lead the user to the desired action.
Refer to the figure for a classic example of leveraging SEO & PPC.
Marketers need to analyze keyphrases for which they have a high rank and use PPC for pure tactical messaging. We have observed a lift in PPC CTR (click through rates) by over 30%, when the client shows high up in the organic results.
One should also have a paid ad show up when people search for your company name, even though you will typically rank # 1 on the organic side. This allows you to have a tactical message that reinforces the message. Not convinced? If you aren’t there, your competitors will definitely be there!
Constantly monitor your SEO ranks, and for those keywords where you have a good rank, feel free to experiment with your PPC ad, you need not worry too much about branding there. That’s extra characters to squeeze in more UVPs, or offers!
Unlike PPC, SEO can be done only for a finite set of keywords based on content that exists in the site. So while your SEO objective would be to achieve top ranks for the strategic set of keywords, your PPC program should (a) Focus on tactical messaging for keywords with high ranks in SEO, and (b) Do a combination of tactical+branding for those keywords where you don’t rank high.
I agree a proper mix of SEO and PPC is good for the overall campaign. Also if you can attain top positions for both SEO and PPC for a particular keyword, the user feels more confident in you than the other sites. Its like the site telling you "I Mean Business" .
Also, since you populate more spaces in the first page, people are more likely to click on your site than your competitors.
Great article by Mr. Vinod. Read lot of stuff about it earlier too but is it that easy to do? What if for paid results that phrase is very expensive? Then I need to move on to other phrase for my organic results too?
If you are unsure of which phrases to target from an SEO perspective, then complete your PPC campaign and make it live. Careful review and analysis of your top performing PPC keyphrases (based on your predetermined KPIs) will give you a great indication of which terms to target from an SEO perspective. Bear in mind, for many major or well known brands, the brand and product names usually account for more than 90% of all traffic. Adding the primary non-brand keyphrases to the mix in the primary on-page SEO elements will not detract from the strength of the brand exposure, but will likely improve your appearance in the SERPs for related non-brand searches. Ensuring that these non-brand keyphrases form part of the anchor text in a backlink strategy is a great strategy.
Over so much time I have seen so many versions of the SERP heat-map that it somehow puts me in dilemma - which one to follow?
So many seo gurus are already commented here so i am not gonna to give any more Gyan to anyone.Only thing i wanted to say that Vinod did a great analysis and whatever is written in the post is the crux of basic internet marketing.
Hi,
I am very new here.
Anyway, nice writeup!
can you please post some background about the heat map - source/reference etc?
Presence on natural and paid rankings increase CTRs on both. This is a fact paraded all around town by Google (to make firms with good search rankings) still do ppc.
saurabh
Great Writeup by Vinod! See SEO and PPC both are great way to drive traffic to your website.But for getting maximum possible clicks for a given search query you need to be present on more than one prominent positions.In natural listing you cant have more than 2 pages in top 10 so whats the option...Answer is PPC!
The article is indeed very helpful in preparing the SEM startegy for any business. Another important aspect which I think should be considered while deciding the strategy is the age of the website. If the website is new, SEO would take some tiime to get the rankings for the strategic key phrases. This time can be utilised by PPC campaigns to generate leads and business. This will also help in improving the CTR of the website. Once the site starts ranking in the natural listings, a balance can be generated and maintained between both SEO and PPC depending upon the specific requirements.
Thanks
Shilpi
http://e-marketing-strategies.blogspot.com/
PPC is very effectively traffic generate for any website but we have to be very conscious for landing page.
I Think this would really help to start an online campaign in a right manner,also helps the advertisers to understand SEO & SEM.
This brings up interesting debate as to How many users really understands the difference between Organic and Paid listing ?
I am very sure that those who are in industry, pretty much aware and sensitive about it, but are really consumers aware about it ?
Moreover, if consumers are , whether having sponsored + organic listing really ensures higher clickthru ?
i would love to see an example if it increases clickthru ?
Thanks,
Ravi
Brilliant logic. SEO followed by PPC campaign on high ranking keywords - perfect way to ensure Relevance.
This approach would really help to have a complete SEM
Should a website struggle to be found by search engines OR should the search engines struggle to find best websites?
Is an algorithm that finds only what’s being fed to it really an intelligent algorithm or should the best algorithms be able to see beyond what’s being shown to them?
Each of the three involved parties – Websites, Search engines and Users have different core objectives;
Websites: Produce content that’s useful to its users.
Users: Consume content that best satisfies their requirements.
Search Engines: Hunt maniacally for the best possible content produced for a user to consume..
If user centricity is a true objective, the search engines must proactively hunt for best matching content and not just confine to return what comes across first – the SEO’d sites. This is not to say that the search engines do not at all return the good but non-optimized sites. They do, on result pages where no user would ever reach. Truly great but non-optimized site appearing on page 5 of the search results is as good as burying some useful content that could have been most useful for a user.
To be found by search engines is not the core business of websites but finding best websites is THE reason for existence of search engines.
The Question: Is it not more logical that Search Engines work towards ‘Web Site Optimization’ (WSO) rather than Websites working towards ‘Search Engine Optimization’ (SEO) ?
The heat map is well created, it gives an insight of the user behaviour on a search result page
Post new comment