PPC and SEO Co-Optimization
From our research, only 2 out of 100 companies currently monitor or measure the interaction between their paid and organic search marketing campaigns. Those teams who did conduct the analysis on a regular basis indicated they received between a 50% to 100% improvement in their overall search performance. It is important to understand that this is not a paid search vs. SEO environment but a PPC + SEO scenario to understand and maximize the collaborative as well as reduce the cannibalistic impact of using the two techniques simultaneously. Research from Google indicates you can gain as much as an 89% lift when both paid and organic search are both on the first page simultaneously. Unfortunately, we find few companies even bother to learn if they have both ads on the same page, what the messages are, and are they collaborative or cannibalizing each other. Here are two examples:
In this first case, we have a keyword with both paid and organic revenue. This is a brand name so it drives significant traffic and ROI. This site buys the brand name “strategically” and doesn’t expect to stop. They were not aware of the negative ROI and its impact on their campaign data. Since they choose to keep it active and accept the negative ROI for the word they have removed it from performance reporting so it does not negatively impact their overall performance.
We have another case where there is both paid and organic and it is a positive ROI. They can opt to keep it going but most likely will test dayparting the keyword to see if those clicks and conversions to PPC would go into Organic allowing them to pause this keyword phrase.
For more details and best practices on How to Maximize Co-Optimization view this presentation from SES Singapore on the topic.ÂÂ