Since the onset of the pandemic, businesses have been forced to rely on different methods and strategies to generate leads, increase traffic, and turn up conversions.
*Updated 9/10/2024
But there seems to be a split in schools of thought when it comes to SEO and PPC. Many claim that SEO is the best way to generate website traffic, while others still stand by PPC to generate higher traffic more quickly.
Shortcuts:
With multi-channel marketing becoming a key to successful digital marketing strategies, it’s more important than ever to create a comprehensive and streamlined approach.
Social media marketing, advanced SEO techniques, PPC, influencers - there is so much data for marketers to harness in order to get it right.
Combining SEO and PPC strategies can help reduce the chatter so that the data can speak for itself in the form of increased traffic and profits.
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It refers to the process of improving a website's visibility and ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs) through various techniques and strategies.
The goal of SEO is to increase organic (non-paid) traffic to a website by optimizing content, structure, and technical elements to meet the criteria search engines use to rank websites.
This includes keyword research, on-page optimization, link building, and improving site speed, among other factors.
In order for your ecommerce website to appear higher in search engine rankings, it's important to invest in a comprehensive SEO strategy.
When it comes to spending, SEO can be free. All it takes is time and effort put towards learning about your target audience, the keywords that they search for to find websites like yours, and how you can leverage that information in your content strategy.
Generating organic traffic to your ecommerce site this way is a slower process that requires continuous maintenance and keyword research.
Rising to the top of search engine results helps lock in a consistent stream of traffic to your site.
PPC stands for Pay-Per-Click, a type of online advertising model where advertisers pay a fee each time one of their ads is clicked. It's commonly associated with platforms like Google Ads, Bing Ads, and social media networks such as Facebook and Instagram.
This model is used to drive traffic to websites, with advertisers bidding on keywords relevant to their target audience.
Pay-per-click, is an online advertising strategy that is used with the intention of earning money by driving traffic to ecommerce pages and products.
The advertiser pays a publisher (like Google) every time that the ad is clicked, meanwhile the publisher puts your ad in front of audiences that are likely to be interested in your products.
These ads can be placed anywhere online. You can find them on other ecommerce pages, social media networks, and anywhere ads can be found online.
Publishers often leverage AI-powered integrations to analyze buying behaviors and consumer activity in order to place the ads for the most appropriate audiences.
Using both SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and PPC (Pay-Per-Click) together can be a powerful way to get more leads and increase sales for your ecommerce store. Both strategies focus on using keywords to reach people who are ready to buy or take action.
SEO helps your website show up in search results without paying for ads, while PPC gets your paid ads to the top of the page.
When you combine them, you’re covering more ground on search engines, making it easier to attract customers. This combined strategy is often called Search Engine Marketing (SEM), which simply means using both free and paid methods to show up in search results.
Using SEO and PPC together works well because PPC can quickly show which keywords are bringing in the most traffic. You can then use those keywords to improve your SEO.
On the flip side, a strong SEO presence can lower the cost of your PPC ads because your website already ranks well.
Finally, choosing a payment service that offers crucial features like invoicing, easy integrations, and automatic payments can make managing your store easier while you focus on improving your SEM strategy.
Making the most of your SEO and PPC strategies as a synergized process is not as complicated as it sounds.
Here are some tips to get you on the right track to create a successful combined SEO and PPC strategy:
In order to make the most of integrating marketing strategies, consistency is key.
Ecommerce brands should seek to keep all brand messaging and creatives consistent across all channels. While this may seem like a difficult task, it actually simplifies many advertising and other marketing processes.
Make sure that your tone and customer impact matches the goals of your brand so that you can attract the right audiences from the beginning, no matter how they ended up coming into contact with your site.
Running two campaigns simultaneously means that there is twice as much data to analyze. Luckily, this can work to your advantage.
Determine what keywords achieve the highest conversion rates, and use that information to optimize your strategy.
Next, leverage that information to inform your content strategy as well. Other relevant data like site search information, customer behavior, and other metrics can be used to increase the efficiency of both your SEO and PPC campaigns.
A/B testing is crucial for any successful digital marketing strategy, and a combined approach to SEO and PPC can enhance your testing abilities even further.
While SEO is more of a long term view, PPC can give insights about conversion and CTR in a much shorter time frame. This makes it a great way to test pages, keywords, and gain an instant bulk of actionable data.
Testing is crucial for brands that really want to leave an impression on consumers and increase traffic to their ecommerce pages. To ensure that your messaging is effective, A/B testing is the way to go.
In addition to increasing traffic, profits and reducing ad spend, another great reason to combine your PPC and SEO approaches is to build trust with your consumers.
Consistent brand messaging across multiple channels and a combined finances build credibility and ensure compliance with the PCI standards.
This lets your customers know that you are an authentic brand who has the online expertise to keep their data secure.
Website optimization is the foundation of your entire brand as an ecommerce site. If your ecommerce brand is serious about making money online, then you have to make your website easy to use and navigate.
Even sites that have high-quality content and informed PPC campaigns with high traffic numbers struggle to convert when page speeds are slow.
Since 91% of the global population uses a mobile device to browse the internet and shop online, you can’t ignore website optimization.
Every single element that is on your website should be able to scale on screens of different sizes. Opt for a mobile-first design and consider your mobile shoppers at every step.
The internet is full of ecommerce sites and advertisers that are all fighting for visual real estate.
As the holiday shopping season ramps up, it’s even more important for ecommerce sites to pull their resources together and commit to an integrated advertising plan with SEO and PPC.
At first glance, it's easy to categorize SEO and PPC as two completely separate digital marketing strategies.
However, it might be more helpful to think of them as two parts of a whole that work together to maximize the value of your digital marketing strategy.
There are many ways that SEO and PPC efforts can complement each other and lead to a more complete search engine strategy.
Shanice Jones is a techy nerd and copywriter from Chicago. For the last five years, she has helped over 20 startups building B2C and B2B content strategies that have allowed them to scale their business and help users around the world.