There are few things better for your online presence than anything organic. From organic visits to searches and growth, anything related to it will only bring profit. Any company can have it, should they allow enough time for their business practices to flourish. Paying for exposure, links, clicks or anything online brings down the profit margin in the short run but can be profitable in the big picture. So it only makes sense to combine the two practices. But can PPC marketing & local SEO services co-exist and fuse? We would like to demonstrate how that’s possible. Without further ado, let’s get into the gist of things!
Combining PPC Marketing & Local SEO
1. The basics
Let’s set the tone for further discussion and clear up some terms. Think of SEO as your long-term plan. As all things organic, it needs time to grow and spread its wings. But, once organic SEO is done, you are free to reap the fruits of your labor. Nothing beats organic SEO searches, Google loves organic growth, and doing everything by the book will net you huge SEO traffic growth. Your marketing plan is not complete by going only with organic.
Yes, all of the benefits are great, but if this is good, more must be better. By including PPC practices you can effectively multiply all the benefits of your organic SEO. On the other side of the table lies PPC, which you should consider as a short-term, high-cost-high return investment with immediate results. Most companies that start fresh have to compete with all those companies that had years of organic SEO practices behind them. Facing such a steep challenge will require both organic SEO and PPC methods, should you wish to have any results.
2. What’s similar?
After covering the basics, it may seem like these two practices are competing for your choice. In reality, they go hand in hand as both have similarities that apply to both ways. Treating them as supplements that cover each flaw mentioned can help you view them in a whole different light. Cooperation and properly utilising both strengths is the winning formula. So, what does organic SEO have in common with PPC and vice-versa? First off, both methods help you target specific markets, customers and niches.
Whether you go with local or national SEO, you will need all the help you can get, and both practices have methods of precise targeting. Spreading your resources too thin by aiming to please anyone only drives costs up with little to no results. Secondly, both practices require extensive research and proper keyword implementation. Finding those right and perfect keywords that will “click” and make a Breakthru is essential for both organic SEO and PPC methods. As both function and have foundations in keywords, making the effort to find the right one will make or break your campaign.
That being said both practices also require ongoing effort, monitoring and evaluation. Even if you miss a keyword or your campaign flops, it will still yield valuable data that you can research. Both practices require you to have strong reins so they don’t drain and waste your resources.
3. Reaping the rewards
Let’s say you now understand both practices and have sublimely implemented them. What’s next on the agenda? Reaping the fruits of your labour comes naturally from successful business practices. SEO and PPC combined multiple results, with the only question remaining of how much. By combining the two, your reach increases multiplicatively. Your local SEO can have the reach of an international one when combined with PPC. The more people hear about you, the better, as each person represents a potential customer.
As your reach expands, your exposure skyrockets and the world gets to know your business. Because both practices are there for you to profit from, the results come in much faster when combined. PPC practices can yield results in minutes from the application, which is incredible when you look at it. Then those results form a baseline for SEO practices to grow, nurture and keep constant. In this analogy, consider PPC a jumpstart for your car, where SEO is the professional driver.
Both are essential for winning a race. Finally, when combining the two, you are generating a cost-effective marketing strategy. PPC allows for quick results, and you can run it multiple times in quick succession with different parameters. These produce valuable data for you to analyse, and then you can apply best practices for your organic SEO long-term strategy.
4. The caveats
It’s not all sunshine and rainbows when it comes to PPC and SEO. Keeping both feet on the ground and taking the good with the bad, will help you form a more realistic view of both. We agree that the benefits are multiple and both practices need each one for maximum results, but there are also common pitfalls to look out for. When using both methods, the results and profits go up but so do the costs. Two strategies require twice the expenditure, or even more, depending on the situation. Costs go up exponentially when you make mistakes, or your combined effort does not break even.
While it’s entirely possible to treat such costs as future investments, your company still needs to be able to make and survive such practices. Secondly, you will have to work twice as hard, hire more people or outsource your SEO needs. Either way, more manpower and hands on the deck are required since you are doubling down on your intentions. Putting double strain on your existing workforce, or trying to juggle both by yourself, will only lead to dropping the ball on both. One size does not fit all, and one SEO employee (or you trying to manage the entire endeavour alone) cannot produce the same result as two or more.
While you may view hiring more people as an expenditure, the results more than cover the expense as people have fewer on their plates. Properly spreading the load and increasing your workforce to handle the wider and more diverse campaign, will carry the weight of your future marketing department.
5. Data analysis
We’ve mentioned this item before, but it’s worth giving it room to breathe. Data-driven decisions are the foundations of all successful companies, and yours must not be the exception. Running SEO and PPC together yields results and data, but what can you do with them? At what key pieces of data do you have to focus your sights on, and what can you safely disregard?
Let’s also focus on two pieces of information that go well together. Bounce and exit rates, combined with time spent on your site. First, let’s take a look at the obvious one, the time spent. Bigger does not mean better in this case, as you need to disregard all abnormal long sessions (possible from people who forgot to close the tab or bots) and extremely low sessions (probably from bots again). Doing so will yield accurate data and give you a reasonable time that people spend on each of your pages.
Then you can see where the drop-offs, or the bounce and exit rates, happen. Your site traffic is like water flowing thru a canal. When you see where it drops off or ends, you know where you are leaking customers and can apply a fix. Then comes clickthrough and conversion rate. Both show you how effective your strategy was and how it can improve. Clickthrough shows how many people saw your ad or link and how many % clicked on it. Focusing on increasing the % with better messages, precise niche targeting, and finding quality market sectors, reduces costs for your campaign.
When people come to your site via PPC and clickthroughs, then conversion rates come into play. Conversions are the next step that shows what % of viewers or visitors became paying customers. Whether a visitor becomes a customer is subject to multiple factors. These factors are product price, site design, overall tone and message, customer expectations, and so on. All of the mentioned factors combine into the conversion stat, as the final stat that measures the success of your campaign. The point of each action is to maximize profits where the result justifies your SEO and PPC practices because it’s hard to argue against something that rakes in profits and leads to a growing customer base.
In Summary
You can find plenty of examples from real-life situations, where combining two great things lead to incredible results. Vodka and martini, chocolate and cherry, pizza and bear, etc. The point is to take the best of both worlds and mitigate the downsides with the positives from both. Making any changes to your marketing strategy and incorporating any aspect of the SEO and PPC practices, is better than doing nothing at all. Organic and paid, long and short term, quick and steady, both may seem like they are competing for your attention. In real-life practice, they go hand in hand to create the best outcome for your company. Profiting from the best of both worlds is possible, all it takes is some practice, perseverance, and level-headed implementations. Viewing SEO and PPC as supplementary friends that can cooperate produces the optimal business strategy. We wish you all the best!
