PPC is Pay Per Click, right? It's basically ads and banners. On the other hand, SEO is all about search results and organic links.
Like you said in your post, it depends on what you're looking for. Instant, short term results. Or long term organic traffic. Or perhaps both.
That's correct. PPC can also have a direct influence on your search results as well. I haven't used PPC advertising myself, but it's something that I hope to explore in the near future.
Explore the benefits of PPC and SEO working together. And how to use them both to meet your goals.
www.semrush.com
Wondering how PPC advertising affects SEO? Learn how PPC impacts organic results and why you should use PPC and SEO.
www.webfx.com
Does PPC affect SEO?
When you ask this question, you may expect a direct yes or no answer. The truth of the matter is that PPC doesn’t directly impact SEO, but it does indirectly impact SEO.
There are many indirect occurrences that result from using a combination of PPC and SEO initiatives. If you want to maximize your results with your marketing plan, it’s best to use these two methods in conjunction with one another.
So, how does PPC impact SEO?
1. PPC ads allow you to maximize real estate in search results
When you run PPC ads, they appear at the top of the search results — and people see PPC ads first when they conduct searches.
Coupled with SEO, PPC ads help your business occupy more territory in search engine results pages (SERPs). If someone skips past the ads and goes to the organic search results, they’ll see your business’s listing there, too. This creates a double exposure. Someone is exposed to both your paid listing and your organic listing.
Ultimately, this maximizes the chances that people will click one of your listings and visit your company’s website to learn more.
The double exposure makes your audience “biased” towards your business. They assume that, by seeing your business multiple times in the results, you must offer reputable products and services.
Combining PPC and SEO is extremely valuable because it guides more traffic to your site and encourages people to engage with your business.
2. PPC helps you discover more valuable organic SEO keywords
Keyword targeting is a crucial part of your PPC and SEO strategies. If you want to appear in more relevant search results, you must target the right keywords.
Since SEO takes time to show results, it can be difficult to gauge the effectiveness of your keyword targeting right off the bat.
Fortunately, PPC allows you to see immediate results, so you can pinpoint which keywords are driving traffic and which ones are less effective. This allows you to optimize your SEO targeting to drive even better results.
Using PPC keyword data to inform your SEO campaigns helps you understand what your customers want and the keywords they use. Instead of waiting to see if your SEO keyword optimizations drive results, you can use PPC data to find out quicker and make necessary tweaks to your SEO campaigns.
3. PPC creates brand awareness that leads people to click organic listings
PPC ads drive clicks to your website. When someone clicks on your PPC ad, they go to your landing page and learn information about your business. In some cases, people will click on your ad, get distracted, and leave.
This may seem discouraging, but people will gain awareness of your brand via PPC ads.
When they search for similar products or services in the future, they will remember your business — and they will be more likely to click your organic search listings over competitor’s listings.
As leads get more familiar with your business, they’re more likely to engage and click on your organic content in the future. This leads to an increase in site traffic, and ultimately conversions, for your business.
So, PPC ads build brand awareness that can lead to organic search traffic in the future.
1. Combining PPC and SEO increases visibility in search results
When you use PPC and SEO together, you increase your brand’s visibility. As we’ve stated before, seeing both a PPC listing and organic SEO listing has a huge impact on your audience. They assume that your business fits the bill because they keep seeing you in the results.
Increased visibility creates more opportunities for your website to earn traffic. You’ll drive more valuable leads to your page and help your page rank higher in the results.
3. PPC data can improve your SEO content
In general, what works for PPC typically works for SEO. Since SEO takes time to show results, you can use PPC to test and optimize parts of your SEO campaign.
For example, testing headings for your PPC campaigns provides you with insight into the title tags for your SEO campaigns. You can see which titles drive valuable traffic for your business — and it’s a great way to help you figure out the right title for your SEO pages.
You can test other elements, like meta descriptions and page content, to see how your audience reacts to them. This will help you put out the best content on your website.
PPC is a great opportunity for you to test your site content to produce the best organic listing for your business.