When it comes to driving website traffic and leads for your business, the age-old debate of SEO vs. PPC arises. As a marketer, you may have experimented with both strategies but may still be left wondering which strategy truly packs a punch for your service or product. The truth is that SEO and PPC are like two sides of a coin — both are required for a successful digital marketing strategy.
SEO vs. PPC: An Overview
Let’s begin by briefly looking at the advantages of using SEO or PPC as a stand-alone strategy before reviewing how they can be used together for maximum impact.
SEO
Cost-effective: SEO is an affordable way to increase website traffic over time. Optimizing for search engines can lead to an increase in organic traffic, resulting in increased conversions.
Long-term strategy: Continuously optimizing the website and creating high-quality content can maintain and improve search engine rankings, resulting in sustained traffic and revenue.
Takes time to see results: It can take several months for a website to start ranking in SERP and even longer to reach the top of the search engine rankings.
Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the practice of optimizing your website for search engines to increase organic visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs). This includes tactics like keyword research, on-page optimization, link building, content creation, technical SEO such as site speed optimization, and structured data implementation.
SEO has the potential to generate lasting results since it focuses on long-term optimization, which gives you a steady stream of visitors without any additional costs associated with maintaining your rankings over time. However, it does take time to see results and requires a continuous effort to maintain and improve organic performance and visibility.
PPC
Immediate results: By targeting keywords, marketers can quickly drive targeted traffic to the website.
Targeted traffic: Targeting specific audiences and keywords ensures that the traffic received is highly relevant to the service or product offering.
More expensive: Businesses must pay for each click on their ads, which can add up quickly. Additionally, PPC advertising can be highly competitive, making it difficult for the audience to engage with the right ads.
Pay per click, or PPC, on the other hand, is a fast-paced strategy that allows marketers to bid on relevant keywords and phrases to display their ads in top results for queries. PPC campaigns have been proven time and time again to deliver excellent returns on investments if proper attention is paid to the details throughout the campaign’s lifespan.
This includes things like testing different ad copies or targeting different demographics through geo-targeting efforts – all of which help increase conversion rates significantly when done right. However, PPC can become costly if not managed correctly, and individuals have limited ad placement and visibility control.
Combining SEO and PPC
SEO and PPC make a powerful duo. While SEO is ideal for long-term lead generation, PPC can be used to gain visibility and leads quickly. To maximize the potential of both strategies, create an integrated plan that merges their individual strengths and uses insights from one to enhance the performance of another. Here are a few examples of how the two tactics work together.
Increase the conversion rate on your website
- Use PPC to conduct A/B testing on ad copy and creative to identify the most effective elements.
- Use insights from PPC testing to optimize your website's pages for conversions.
- Utilize heatmap and user behavior analytics to identify areas of your website that may be causing visitors to bounce and make necessary changes to improve the user experience.
- Implement call-to-action (CTA) buttons throughout your website and use A/B testing to optimize their placement and messaging.
- Use retargeting campaigns to reach potential customers who have previously visited your website.
- Utilize analytics data to track the effectiveness of your campaigns and make data-driven decisions to optimize your campaigns for maximum conversions.
Optimize content for desktop and mobile UX
- Use technical SEO to improve mobile website speed and usability.
- Optimize images, minify code, and use a content delivery network (CDN) to ensure fast loading speeds for mobile users.
- Create separate landing pages for mobile PPC campaigns to ensure the best user experience. Utilize insights from mobile analytics to identify areas of potential growth in organic traffic.
- Implement a responsive design that incorporates elements of both SEO and PPC, such as titles, descriptions, and calls to action.
- Utilize Google Search Console to monitor your website's mobile performance and make adjustments as needed.
- Launch mobile-specific PPC campaigns to target users searching for products or services on their mobile devices.
Maximize lead generation through targeted landing pages
- Use SEO to research and identify profitable keywords relevant to your offering.
- Use PPC to drive targeted traffic to specific landing pages designed to convert visitors into leads or customers.
- Use data from PPC campaigns to inform and optimize SEO efforts, such as identifying high-performing keywords to target in the website content.
- Continuously monitor and optimize SEO and PPC efforts to improve website visibility in SERPs, increase conversion rates and drive more targeted leads.
Tools for SEO and PPC Performance Tracking
Monitoring and analyzing performance is crucial to driving more traffic to the website. Various tools, such as those offered by Google and HubSpot, provide the necessary data to track key metrics and drive revenue growth.
Google Analytics & Search Console
Google Analytics and Search Console are essential tools for tracking and optimizing website traffic performance. Google Analytics provides valuable insights into metrics such as page views, bounce rates, conversions, user demographics, geographic location, and referral sources.
By analyzing these metrics and creating custom reports, organizations can gain deeper insights into their online presence and identify key areas for improvement. Search Console helps shed light on website visibility within the SERP. Marketers can use these insights to create keyword-focused content that increases visibility in the organic rankings.
Hubspot CMS and Traffic Analytics Tool
HubSpot is a comprehensive marketing, sales, and service software that delivers omnichannel insights to increase website traffic, generate leads and improve customer experience. The platform offers a range of features and capabilities, including:- Comprehensive Metrics Tracking: Track and analyze page views, bounce rate, and conversion rate, and provide detailed information on user interactions, including the referral source, session duration, and viewed pages.
- Customized Dashboards & Visualizations: Monitor trends over time and gain a deeper understanding of how different marketing campaigns/content types impact user behavior.
- Integration with Other Analytics Platforms: Enrich data analysis and recording by integrating with analytics platforms already included in Google Analytics and Search Console.
- Built-In SEO Recommendations: Use recommendations within the blog page to improve site ranking on SERPs.
- Insights into Content Strategies: Leverage data insights to make informed decisions about content and design. A/B test different versions of websites, emails, and other digital mediums to determine which ones perform best.
- Heatmaps & Click Tracking: Monitor interactions by page to identify areas where users experience difficulty or drop-offs in engagement.
- Goal Tracking & Conversion Funnels: Track goals and conversions such as signups, purchases, or downloads using funnels to understand how a customer journey progresses through user acquisition stages.
- Campaign Attribution: Measure and attribute the performance of campaigns across channels (email, display ads, organic search, etc.).
- Custom Reports & Segmentation: Generate reports and segment data by date range and criteria.
The Takeaway
If your SEO and PPC strategy is not effectively driving traffic and conversions, it may be time to consider the foundational elements of your web build. The backend processes fueling your website play a crucial role in traffic performance. A website redesign can improve page speed, crawlability, and user experience to increase the effectiveness of your optimization efforts.
We recommend checking out the "Website Redesign Guide" curated by New Breed's experts in HubSpot, SEO, PPC, inbound marketing, and web development. This guide will give you a comprehensive understanding of optimizing your website for maximum results.
