28989640326_0c082c469b_z

 

A lot of small business owners who don’t have much marketing experience think of SEO and PPC as two completely distinct things. While, as strategies, they certainly have a lot of differences, if you want to get the most out of your marketing investments it pays to think of these things as two sides of the same coin. Here are some of the main benefits of using SEO and PPC in unison.

 

Greater Visibility

 

One of the most prominent benefits of using these two techniques in conjunction is added exposure on a given SERP (search engine results page). After you’ve managed to achieve a decent rank through SEO, it can be tempting to reduce your PPC activity. Don’t Give into temptation! Anyone with experience at an SEO company will tell you that it’s very important to remember that the top two or three links your customers will see on any SERP will be PPC ads. When you pump enough resources into both strategies, and dominate both the organic and paid search results of your niche, it will work miracles for your traffic, and tell your customers that you have a major presence in a particular industry.

 

You Can Use PPC Copy to Inform Your SEO

 

In a lot of cases, what works for PPC campaigns works for SEO campaigns. When you start monitoring which PPC ads reap in the most conversions, and make this a default part of your PPC management, it will give you a great idea for creating title tags, meta descriptions and content for your organic landing pages. Another big benefit of using PPC ads to test out attributes of your page is the speed of the results. After making a few tweaks, you’ll know fairly quickly what’s working and what isn’t. Effectively testing your organic metas, on the other hand, can be a long and arduous process.

 

Bring E-Commerce Feeds into AdWords Results

 

There have certainly been worse times to be an ecommerce business owner. Google has now allowed you to link specific product pages to PPC ads. The ad your target market will see will feature the product, possibly along with some reviews, and clicking on the link will take a user straight to the product page, where they can then convert and make a purchase. If you’re running an ecommerce operation, and your SEO efforts aren’t doing enough for you, then this is a great way to use PPC to bolster your marketing.

 

Stomp Out Negative PR

 

Even when you’re a relatively unknown brand, there’s the chance of someone saying something negative about your company. If and when this happens, SEO and PPC can be exceedingly powerful tools for limiting the damage your brand takes. This is linked closely with my first point. If you dominate the organic and PPC results of a certain term, you’ll be able to guide the conversation more effectively. For example, following their infamous oil spill, BP invested in many PPC ads for the search term “oil spill”. This took a user directly to a page on their site that was covering the cleanup.