10 Reasons To Do Both SEO & PPC

Most people look at SEO and PPC as two entirely different industries. While there are fundamental differences, SEO and PPC are both tactics for generating traffic online. The best Internet Marketing strategies are those that make use of both to compliment each other. Search Engine Optimization should in truth encompass Pay Per Click, it encompasses EVERY other method of effecting how a Search Engine looks at your site so why not Sponsored Results? Well that is simply because in SEO's starting out it had to besmirch PPC's name to compete, now it is established and cheerleaders for both sides keep the animosity going. Here are the top 10 reasons why ANY company that operates a website and has a marketing budget should use both SEO and PPC;

1 - By having a top ranking PPC ad and a top ranking SEO result on the same S.E.R.P. you can increase your CTR by up to 66% organically and 35% sponsored. The dramatic change in CTR should be enough to make any SEO Wizard or any PPC Assassin want to add that tactic to his or her campaigns.

2 - During the SEO and PPC processes it is necessary to many trial and error scenarios
to find the most effective wording, fonts, dynamic texts, keywords etc. One of the
great things about running both in this situation is that it gives you double the
methodology to run trial and error scenarios, shortening the "error" side of the process.

3 - Keyword Analysis is direly important to both industries and by having both
running it gives you two whole separated sets of data to do cross analysis with, though
so simple this is one of the greatest features of doing both.

4 - Your visibility is dramatically increased because you are guaranteed to be at least two of the results on a S.E.R.P.

5 - The extra traffic from your Pay Per Click Ads will increase the traffic rankings for your site by directing large amounts of quick and easy traffic to your website immediately while waiting for SEO tactics to play out.

6 - High performing PPC Ad Copies work incredibly well as the Meta Description and vice versa, high performing SEO Meta Descriptions can perform incredibly well as PPC Ad Copy.

7 - The better that you SEO a website, the higher the quality score the search engine gives your PPC Ads and the lower your overall CPC will be. At Ascension we personally have used this tactic many times to pay less CPC for a #1 rank than my competitor was paying for the #2 rank under same Keyword Phrase.

8 - Doing in depth analysis of your market demographics is key to any marketing campaign. Social Network PPC is one of the most priceless methods to do this, they allow you to refine your ads to target specific groups like 22 year old engaged women for example if you are a wedding photographer. This allows you to do major analysis that will increase your product, customer and industry knowledge and help with your SEO.

9 - Also doing damage control for bad PR is a valid use of the combined efforts. IF you have bad reviews or slanderous info online under search phrases you can use PPC to tell the truth about the situation and SEO to slowly wipe it off the front page results.

10 - Every major company makes use of this tactic if they advertise online. Safeway for example, if you look up their Refreshe soda you will see that they are #1 SEO and #1 PPC even though there is NO competition under the phrase and it is their personalized brand of soda. Your company cannot afford to hire a panel of analysts most likely, Safeway can and does. Their analysts obviously have seen that the branding capabilities and ROI far exceed the cost of doing both.

There is a lot of misinformation about PPC and SEO out there, learn from your own experiences and question my own. Run your own analysis and see what it tells you, I'm sure you will find I'm not far off from your own mark. It is my hope over the next few years to set up seminars to help marketers realize the truths behind the two mediums and not "take a side" so to say. Ours is one of the few PPC Corporations that will ALWAYS tell its clients that doing SEO is important and in no way should they stop just because we are running a vast PPC campaign for them. Always remember no matter how confusing times become, Ascension's PPC Assassins, SEO Wizards and Tech Gurus are here to guide you to sanity. Never underestimate the little red guy…