Many companies seem to think that their SEO and PPC campaigns are two completely different (and even unrelated) things.
But think about it; in spite of the difference in the medium – one channel focuses on paid ads, the other on building your organic search presence – each aims to deliver the same result:
More traffic and customers from Google.
So, wouldn’t it make more sense to have both teams work together, share their insights and data, and work in tandem to help your business grow?
And yet, so often, it’s the opposite that happens. SEO and PPC teams work separately. What’s more, each often heavily protects their work from the other.
In this post, I’ll show you how your campaigns suffer as a result. We’ll also discuss what you could gain by having both teams work together, and finally, I’ll also show you how to avoid having this problem altogether by hiring one agency to manage both channels for you.
Let’s begin.
What happens when PPC and SEO teams work in silos
Let’s start by understanding how the problem even begins to occur.
And it has a lot to do with whom you hire for the job.
You see – Because businesses often perceive SEO and PPC as two different things, rather than two sides of the same coin, their owners tend to hire separate companies to manage each channel.
Now, don’t get me wrong, there are situations when doing so makes sense. You might be operating in a highly specialized niche, for example. As a result, it might be harder for you to find one agency that would have the expertise in managing both channels for companies like yours.
SaaS brands often face such issues. Given how competitive and unique their products and the market are, it’s no wonder that those companies prefer to hire dedicated SEO consultants and PPC experts.
But if you run a professional services company or a local business, then you should have no problems with finding an agency that does both SEO and PPC. Plenty of such companies specialize in helping businesses like yours get more clients from Google.
(A side note – In some cases, the problem also occurs because of the internal company culture. Some companies prefer to keep their teams in silos, thinking that by doing so, they minimize the risk of data leaks. But this is rarely true, yet by thinking this way, they greatly affect the potential outcomes of their marketing efforts.)
Agencies are sometimes at fault too.
Many such companies protect their insights and processes from other vendors. They consider any other agency, even if they specialize in a different channel, as a competition and strive to reduce the potential of the other company discovering their processes and tips of the trade.
I’ve also worked with agencies whose owners constantly felt afraid that the other company might criticize their work to the client and cause their dismissal. In reality, this rarely happens as most agencies focus on their work and respect their colleagues. Still, it’s something I’ve witnessed firsthand and thought worth including on the list.
Finally, agencies fear that the other company will “steal” their results. Personally, I can’t imagine how this could happen. Each company focuses on a different channel, after all. Yet, such fear of losing the results is a factor that makes some agencies distance themselves from their colleagues.
In the end, however, the outcome is always the same; Each team lacks the data that could help them gain better context and achieve results faster.
So what happens when SEOs and PPC teams share their data with each other?
Of course, the easy answer is that, well, it’s the opposite of what I described earlier: Your campaigns perform better, you get more relevant visitors, clicks, and conversions.
But that’s just part of the story.
You see – achieving SEO, and PPC synergy means far more than just better campaigns. As you’ll see shortly, having both teams exchange data can save you a lot of money and time while you’re building your business.
Let me explain it by showing you the many ways SEO and PPC teams can work together.
#1. Exchanging keywords lists
This is by far the most obvious way both teams can collaborate. Each team would have created its preferred keyword lists anyway. These lists contain all phrases the team wants to test and try out when working on your campaign:
- The SEO team typically focuses on a wide range of keywords that can establish your company in the SERP along the entire buyer’s journey.
- PPC team, on the other hand, would focus on more commercial phrases that they assume would deliver clicks and conversions.
Because each team approaches keyword research differently, they’re prone to finding and including different phrases in their target lists.
Exchanging those lists would immediately expand each team’s set of keywords by phrases their counterparts have discovered, but they didn’t.
#2. Sharing best-performing keywords
Sharing keyword lists helps both teams build a complete picture of the search opportunity for their clients.
Later, as their campaigns are running, teams could share their best-performing keywords. This would allow the other side to improve their campaigns’ results.
Knowing what keywords perform best for the other channel might inform the team’s decisions about which phrases to target next.
Also, the SEO team could use PPC insights to decide which of their target phrases is worth additional effort.
This brings us to the next point…
#3. SEO could take over many well-performing keywords from PPC
Running PPC campaigns means that you also need to manage the ad spend. This often requires deciding which phrases to bid on and which ones to stop targeting.
Unfortunately, doing so also means that your PPC team might need to drop potentially lucrative keywords just because they don’t have enough budget for those.
In such a situation, SEOs could take over and target their efforts at those keywords. The team could establish your organic search presence for those. This would result in the company would still receive traffic from those phrases, although without the need to constantly invest PPC budget in them.
#4. Both teams can exchange data on weakly performing keywords too
This would save the other team time, money, and effort in pursuing those.
#5. PPC could also help SEOs validate audience insights faster
One of the main differences between SEO and PPC is the time it takes to see results.
- With PPC, you could start receiving traffic almost instantly after the campaign goes live.
- For SEO, it can take several months to build significant traffic from the channel.
As a result, PPC is a much better channel to verify the audience and quickly see which assumptions about the market are true and which ones aren’t.
Sharing this data with the SEO team would help them avoid spending months targeting specific keywords, only to discover that they don’t hold as much commercial potential as the data has led the team to believe.
#6. PPC can help SEO test new keywords
Similarly, SEO teams could ask their PPC colleagues to test keywords they’d like to target next. Dedicating even a tiny portion of the advertising budget to those keywords would deliver incredible insights for the SEO team and help them better focus their efforts.
#7. Targeting the same landing pages
PPC teams often create dedicated landing pages for their campaigns. It only makes sense. Sending ad click traffic to such a page will increase the quality score and reduce the cost per click.
But SEOs could optimize those pages for search traffic too, and drive additional visits from search engines.
For that to happen, though, both teams must work together on those pages. PPC team must allow SEOs to optimize the page for organic keywords, while SEOs must allow their colleagues on the other team to include various conversion strategies on the page.
#8. Both teams can work together to increase brand awareness
The first outcome of both SEO and PPC campaigns is traffic.
When everything’s working well, your ads and organic listings attract visitors. Those people land on your website, discover and learn more about the company, its products, and services, and often explore other pages.
And although the person might not have converted in any way, they’ve just learned about you. That’s an invaluable outcome. A potential customer already knows about your company. They might notice you as they search for similar products or services in the future and choose your listing over another, unknown to them, provider.
When SEO and PPC teams share data and work together, they ensure that more and more such customers discover your company and become increasingly familiar with your brand.
#9. PPC ad data can help SEOs optimize pages better
PPC ads contain many elements that SEOs could use when working on the on-page optimization of your site:
- Best-performing ad headlines can suggest the best copy to use in a page’s meta title, increasing the click through rate of the page’s organic results.
- Ad copy could inform meta descriptions and so on.
Naturally, both teams do not have to use the same copy. But knowing which phrases or sales benefits attract more clicks for a PPC ad will help SEOs write meta tags that help your brand stand out in SERPs.
How to ensure that you get the full benefit from SEO and PPC campaigns?
Did you spot my little hint at the answer earlier in this guide? I said that the problem with SEO and PPC teams working in silos has a lot to do with whom you hire for the job.
Hire two separate agencies to oversee each channel, and you risk having them working independently rather than collaborating to increase your traffic and leads.
The solution? Choose an agency capable of managing both PPC and SEO strategies for firms like yours.
At Envoca, for example, we help clients with both paid advertising and search engine optimization.
Moreover, because we oversee both channels, we can also oversee your entire lead generation process and continuously optimize your campaign for higher conversions.
Whether you want customers to fill out a lead capture form, call your business, or engage with you in another way, we can ensure that:
- Your ads and organic listings will attract only the most relevant traffic, and
- These visitors will complete the desired action and become leads.
Finally, when working with us, you own all the data and assets. We will never hold your website files, analytics data, or other insights we’ve collected while working on your campaigns.