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PPC and SEO Powers Combined

Written by Ryan Fontana 3 Comments < back to blog home

What do Captain Planet and SEER have in common? We’ve got powers combined.  Sure, he’s got the Planeteers (earth, fire, wind, water and heart), but we’ve got SEO & PPC.  And our powers combined are better.  And while we have the podium, where does ‘heart’ even tie into all of this? One of these things is not like the other…

Let’s get back to the business.  Working at SEER, we’re surrounded by amazing talent for both SEO and PPC.  Some of our clients realize that the talent here is everywhere, and they’re wise enough to utilize our expertise in both areas.  Sometimes we see things in SEO that PPC doesn’t see, and vice versa.  With that (and Captain Planet) in mind, we’re going to show some of the ways we share these “elements” between teams:

EARTH: Keyword Research & Opportunities

Keywords (much like earth) are the basis of everything we SEO’s & SEM’s do. As we’re sure all of you SEO’s know, getting significant data on a targeted keyword can take weeks, months, sometimes even years. In PPC however, we have the luxury of getting (almost) instant feedback. Rather than spend a significant chunk of time on a keyword you’re not sure about, test it in PPC first! After 6-8 weeks of data has accumulated, have your PPC pal run a Search Query report to find the exact queries that have/have not been working and use that data to guide your efforts.

Similarly if you are a PPC Manager, you can use your SEO team’s research and analytics data to help attack the long tail. Sure we know that bidding on “whey protein” would be great for a body building site, but do we know if Cake Batter or Cinnamon Bun flavors convert better? Do we know if people are more likely to enter brand name X over brand name Y and so forth. These are all ideas that can be gained for free using existing SEO research and analytics data.

WIND: Copy – What Works & What Doesn’t

Just executing one search on… pretty much anything will likely lead to a whole lot of hot air. Everybody on the Internet is testing copy in one way or another; some good, some bad, some ugly.  Similar to our keyword suggestions above, you can garner a lot of insight from testing copy points in PPC ads before taking the time to write out copy in long form and implement it for SEO.

Organically speaking, does your site see a better conversion rate for your white paper, case studies, demo requests or free puppies? Before you start wasting precious resources/money on landing page development or valuable time on ad copy composition, take a look at the data that already exists on the site!

WATER: Linking & Advertising Opportunities

Do you run PPC ads on the Google Display Network? Are you getting a wave of cheap conversions from Re-marketing? Use the information from these tools to your advantage! Run a placement report to find which sites are converting from the Display Network. Use that same report to find out where your Re-marketing audience goes after they leave your site. Chances are if these sites are converting or relevant in the PPC world, they’ll also represent some strong linking opportunities.

SEO folks; when you evaluate linking opportunities, do you send them to your PPC cohorts? No? You should. A large majority of sites are available to target as placements through the Google Display Network, or through a variety of other marketing channels. If these sites represent the target audience, send ‘em on over.

FIRE (fighting)

On April 28^th, Dr. Oz hosted a show called ‘Fat Busting Metabolism Boosters’, and one of his guests recommended using raspberry ketones to help your body burn fat.  If you ever wanted to know what kind of reach Dr. Oz has on his audience, check out this screenshot of Google Insights for “raspberry ketones” for the date the showed aired, and the following 2 weeks:

How did we find out about this new fat burning craze? No, we didn’t watch the show.  And no, we weren’t at the live taping, either. We knew because while Ryan was in Google Analytics for a client in the supplement industry, we noticed a significant increase in both search traffic and bounce rate for the 28^th in particular. On April 28^th alone, they received nearly 1,220 visits across 152 keywords containing the word “raspberry.”  The increased bounce rate was due to the fact that they were sold out of the product (cue the violin).

The SEO and PPC team immediately touched base so we could make sure we knew the cause of the traffic increase, and that we could find a solution. The PPC manager paused the product to prevent any waste, and we worked together to find any products on the site that DID include the famed fat burning Ketones. We recommended that the client link from the sold out product (with great rankings) to the product in stock, and also redirected & expanded our PPC keywords to target the in-stock product.

HEART: Communication

Having an open line of communication between your SEO and PPC manager is the most essential lesson here. Without that line of communication, the prior four ideas simply will not happen. Here at SEER, the PPC and SEO account managers are in touch constantly, jotting ideas down on the white/chalkboards and sharing thoughts over sandwiches or sangria.

In the end, I guess heart does have a place after all…

So what do you think? How do you sync your SEO and PPC elements together? Leave your ideas in the comments below or connect with Aaron and Ryan on Twitter.

Posted: 05.18.11