If advertisers want to achieve the best results from their online
investment, brands should not focus just on PPC or SEO.
The ideal long term strategy is to have high visibility on both
paid and natural sides of the search results. This is the most
effective way for a brand to standout and achieve dominance
within a search page. A combined strategy will also give the
greatest chance of consumer clicks, meaning that both click
volumes as well as overall conversion volume are higher.
• Testing: new keywords can be tested in the PCC campaigns
to assess their performance to show more immediate results
than SEO can deliver. Keywords which generate good results
can then be added to the list of terms promoted through SEO.
Likewise, those terms which don’t perform can be left out of the
list to promote through SEO so that resource can be directed
to promoting terms that will have the most impact on overall
performance. Creative messaging can also be tested through
PPC, providing insights which can then be implemented in SEO.
• Generic terms: they have the highest search volumes and
should be supported through PPC and SEO to ensure visibility.
This will impact user consideration. As these terms also tend
to have the highest cost per click (CPC), SEO can take the
pressure off the PPC listings.
• Tactical activity: it’s important that for tactical campaigns
SEO and PPC teams/agencies align approach. Short term
promotions/communications can be reflected in PPC text while
text in the natural listings will take longer to amend.
• Landing page: it is essential that the page consumers land on
is the same as advertised in the search listings, whether they’ve
come through a PPC link or a natural one. With PPC now
factoring in landing page content into the ranking and quality
score advertisers should consider using pages developed for
SEO purposes to deeplink through to (a deep link is a link that
takes a user from a top level page, to a page further down in the
site’s structure skipping a number of layers).
• Search submit pro: is a middle ground between PPC and
SEO, run by Yahoo! Search Marketing and can help visibility in
the natural side of the page.