Your Strategies to Get PPC and SEO to Play Nice Don’t Work Anymore, Here’s What to Do About It
If you’ve been in digital marketing long enough, you can probably remember the days when there were clear cut strategies you could use to avoid competing with yourself in search when using both PPC and SEO to meet your digital goals. Sure, from the dawn of PPC advertising, challenges have existed for marketers, from search ads cannibalizing your organic traffic to bids being driven up by self-competition, limited attribution models leading to a lack of clarity on what impact PPC and SEO efforts were having on your bottom line. That said, there were well-defined strategies you could take to stop PPC and SEO from competing if you were willing to put in the time and effort. From negative keywords strategies, budget caps on branded campaigns, and even funnel strategies by keyword type there were clear cut ways to allow both channels to run independently, achieving separate goals and targets.
Where the problem lies
Now, those old strategies are out the window. Since 2015, Google has been pushing advertisers hard in the direction of automation, AI, machine learning making continual advancements in their advertising bidding options, campaign types and more to streamline the process of advertising on their platform and maximize results for advertisers. Performance Max (PMax) campaigns, launched in 2021, is the culmination of all of those efforts. PMax campaigns are designed to streamline and optimize ad performance across all Google inventory, including YouTube, Display, Search, Discover, and more, using machine learning. Performance Max promises a more efficient use of ad budgets by automatically adjusting bids and placements to maximize conversions and value. And, it delivers.
For most advertisers, PMax campaigns deliver more conversions at a lower cost than any other PPC strategy. So, what’s the problem again?
You have to forfeit control to let it work. Which as you probably know, if you found this article, isn’t great for SEO. So, what’s a marketer to do?
Employ new strategies.
Integrate Your PPC and SEO teams
It’s common practice to have organic and paid marketing teams work independently of each other. In fact, some clients use separate agencies to manage these services, but in today’s search landscape, to effectively maximize both of these channels you need your PPC and SEO specialist to start working closely together.
These teams should be collaborating on keyword research and strategy, setting up holistic attribution modeling, creating and presenting cohesive reports that tell a complete story of your search marketing efforts and allocating your budget accordingly to ensure the greatest return on your investment.
Leverage data insights from PPC to inform SEO strategy
Implementing a harmonic (paid and organic) strategy will not yield your desired results immediately. But, if you leverage gathered data from your paid campaigns, you can cut on costs by powering your SEO strategy with key insights on high performing keyword terms. PMax campaigns excel at unearthing high-converting terms, terms you may not have thought of, or not yet invested in from an SEO side of things.
There will be searchers who will opt to only view organic listings, and in those scenarios, you want your website to show up in those top organic search results for those terms that your PPC campaigns have identified as being high-converting.
Focus SEO strategy on high-intent top/mid-funnel terms
Some searches are incredibly competitive and yield dozens of ad results before ever getting to organic results, while other searches have no paid ads. Consider an SEO strategy that focuses on high intent opportunities on top of funnel and mid-funnel terms that won’t have you competing with your paid ads. Model comparison terms are a great example of high-purchase intent search terms that are typically not PPC-heavy.
Making it work
If you’ve felt a bit like it’s a PMax world and you’re just living in it, you’re not alone. The introduction of Performance Max has undoubtedly changed the game, making it harder to control how SEO and PPC play together. But with the right strategies, it’s possible to not only coexist but thrive.
At ATF, we call it harmonic marketing – combining the right channels for the greatest possible impact. Contact us today to learn more about our digital marketing approach.
