Supplementing Organic Results with PPC Advertising

When it comes to detail work, organic and paid media are tools of separate mechanics, but their purpose is the same. Bringing qualified traffic to your site may be accomplished by several digital methods, but they share similar roots. In the case of SEO and PPC advertising, optimization and clickthrough are entirely based on strong content and the keywords behind them.

If search engine marketing is catching your audience by casting a net, pay-per-click advertising is equivalent to buying specific lures and trying them out with specialty bait. Though you may have access to a number of fish organically by swimming in the right waters, knowing what bait to use will help you better use the nets.

Fishing analogy aside, access to your target audience involves a balance of your organic SEO efforts and PPC. Though organic media efforts are free, they are time-consuming and difficult to get right. Using PPC as a tool to nail down your SEO practices is an excellent way to get a leg up on your competitors.

Here’s how you can supplement organic results with PPC

Awareness

By merely paying for ad space on a web page or in search, your brand becomes more visible and collects impressions. Though impressions might be an empty “vanity” metric for some paid media analysts, the benefits of being in the top few results in a search are undeniable. If your SEO efforts are being practiced properly, simply occupying the real estate on the search engine results page (SERP) will increase brand recognition and traffic to your site.

Snippets

The most direct connection between SEO and PPC is the snippet that is developed for your site pages. When you compare the two practices, the daily operations are fairly similar, and the copy you create for each match up nicely. Ad copy corresponds roughly with your meta description, your page titles will often sync up with ad headlines, and the URL you build for the page with the Final URL.

Content

If you are struggling to find a good topic for developing content, using your top-performing ad copy as a basis for inspiration is a great way to get started. Additionally, by identifying negative keywords and search terms that don’t match up with your brand goals in Google Ads (standard practice in search and display campaigns), you can cater your content away from certain words and phrases or use them strategically.

Extensions

Callout extensions allow you to occupy more SERP space while also giving users who search for your keywords the ability to travel directly to specific parts of their site. Not only does this allow the user to connect to the most relevant place in your web property, but it also gives you the opportunity to direct them to pages on your site that may not see much organic navigation.

Keywords

At the heart of any successful campaign are the building blocks of PPC and SEO, the keywords — the veritable cogs to your campaign clockwork. Pay-per-click advertising gives you the opportunity to mine through twice as much data to nail down the queries you want to be showing up for in search. The great part is that the initial research can be used for both aspects, but those keywords will go twice the distance because the return data for each effort is different.

Social Media

Paid advertising on social platforms is an incredible way to collect data on the personas you’ve identified for your brand. You put those user groups to the test with the detail afforded by social ad platforms. For instance, LinkedIn allows advertisers to target by occupation, job title, location, experience, and more. Facebook gives even more options, with demographics tied directly to interests. This data is readily translatable to organic efforts on your site pages or blog.

Information Architecture

Many Google Ads gurus build paid media campaigns from a site’s navigation menus when looking for a place to start with keyword research. This mechanic can be turned around, however, with the paid campaign hierarchy informing your content creation. For instance, if some ad groups that cropped up in your keyword research are performing well, but are not represented on your site, it’s likely a good place to start in developing a new content series based on the keywords within that ad group.

When it comes to driving SEO, it’s imperative to know which keywords are bringing the most qualified traffic to your site. Though keyword planning tools may give you some indication of volume and competition, utilizing your advertising clickthrough and conversion data is one of the best ways to leverage resources at your disposal and inform your organic optimization efforts.

Pyxl specializes in not only helping you capitalize on digital tools but also in implementing our expertise to usher your brand goals from that brainstorming stage all the way through to positive results. Let us know how we can help you leverage the digital landscape – drop us a line!

Updated: Nov 15, 2024