PPC and SEO Co-Optimization
From our research, only 2 out of 100 companies monitor or measure the interaction between their paid and organic search marketing campaigns. Those teams who analyzed regularly indicated they received between 50% and 100% improvement in their overall search performance. It is essential to understand that this is not a paid search vs. SEO environment but a PPC + SEO scenario to understand and maximize the collaboration and 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 searches are simultaneously on the first page. Unfortunately, few companies even bother to learn if they have both ads on the same page, what the messages are, and whether they are 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 unaware 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 traffic, and it has a positive ROI. They can opt to keep it going, but they will most likely test dayparting the keyword to see if those clicks and conversions to PPC would go into Organic traffic, allowing them to pause this keyword phrase.
View this presentation from SES Singapore on the topic for more details and best practices on How to Maximize Co-Optimization.