2 Steps for Balancing SEO and PPC: Beyond Keywords, Branded Keywords

By Nick Roshon

Testing and Optimization Synergies
Landing page testing can drive better cost efficiencies and revenue. By using A/B or multivariate testing, you can swap out different creative or messaging to determine what converts best and ensure you're getting the most bang for the buck from both PPC and SEO investments.

Where possible, your SEO and PPC strategies should leverage the same landing page for keyword optimization. When it's not possible to share a landing page for SEO and PPC on the same keyword, marketers should attempt to leverage paid search testing results to improve their SEO conversion rate and vice versa.

For instance, if you find a certain creative layout converts at a higher rate in PPC, be sure to leverage that creative for any pages ranking in SEO where the test results are applicable and relevant. Likewise, top-performing ad copy and messaging from PPC can be leveraged for SEO in the meta-description, page title, on-page copy and calls-to-action.

In addition, applying SEO best practices to your technical website architecture can improve the effectiveness of both your SEO and PPC campaigns. SEO best practices, such as reducing page load times, having a search-friendly information architecture and other technical elements, may lead to a higher quality score for PPC, as well as more conversions after the click.

Nick Roshon is an account director for San Diego-based independent search marketing agency Covario. Reach him at nroshon@covario.com.