As a digital marketing strategy, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is an effective way to generate leads and sales. And, when used ‌with SEO, PPC can be an extremely powerful tool for driving traffic to your website.

Unfortunately, far too often, PPC and SEO are seen as two separate entities.

The truth is, that PPC and SEO are complementary strategies that can be used together to produce better results.

By understanding how they work together, you can create a holistic digital marketing strategy that will drive more traffic and conversions for your business with the help of an experienced PPC agency to manage your marketing efforts.

Here’s a look at how PPC and SEO can work together to improve your results:

1. Find and Test Keywords

Many times, people will search for a product or service without knowing exactly what they want. They might start out by searching for general terms, but then they might refine their search based on the results that they see.

PPC campaigns are great for quickly testing the purchase intent of keywords. You can use them to determine whether people are actually interested in buying what you’re selling. If people are clicking on your ads and then converting, that’s a good sign that you should target those keywords in your SEO campaign.

You may also find low competition Informative intent keywords such as “how to” or “best” that have conversion potential. You can use these keywords in your SEO campaign to improve your chances of ranking for them.

2. Gather Data

Besides helping you identify keywords, PPC can also help you gather data ‌you can use to improve your SEO campaign. Every time someone clicks on one of your PPC ads, you ‌collect information about them. This includes things like their location, what device they were using, what time of day they were searching, and what keywords they used.

This data can be extremely valuable for fine-tuning your SEO campaign. You can use it to target specific demographics, devices, and even timeframes.

For example, if you notice that a lot of your conversions are coming from people who are searching on their mobile phones during the evening, you can adjust your SEO campaign to target those keywords during that time.

3. Fill in the Gaps

No matter how well you optimize your website, there will always be some keywords that are out of reach. This is especially true if you’re just starting out or if you’re up against larger competitors. Algorithm updates and changes in the SERPs can also make it difficult to target certain keywords.

PPC can ‌fill in the gaps and target those keywords that you’re struggling to rank for organically. Let’s say, for example, that you’re trying to rank for the keyword “best digital camera.” But no matter how much you optimize your website, you just can’t seem to crack the top 10.

Here, you could use PPC to target that keyword and get your website in front of searchers. You might not get as much traffic as you would if you were ranking organically, but it’s still a great way to get your website in front of your target audience.

4. Boost Conversions

PPC allows you to quickly figure out which ones are the most effective by conducting A/B/n testing on different versions of your landing pages. Google Analytics has behavior flow reports which can help you see how users interact with your website after they click on your ad.

There are a few things you can do with this data:

• Look for areas where users are dropping off and try to improve the user experience on those pages.
• Identify which conversion paths are the most successful and replicate them on other pages of your website.
• See which pages have a high bounce rate and try to improve the content on those pages.

Focusing on the most successful conversion paths and replicating them can improve your SEO. If you see that a lot of users are dropping off on a certain page, you can use that data to improve your on-page SEO for that page.

Conclusion

PPC and SEO are two separate but equally important pieces of the puzzle. When used together, they can create a powerful traffic-driving machine for your website.

If you’re not using PPC to supplement your SEO campaign, you’re missing out on a valuable opportunity to get more traffic and conversions. Likewise, if you’re not using the data from your PPC campaigns to improve your SEO, you’re not getting the most out of your efforts.