looking at graphs of combining seo and ppc campaign success

4 Reasons You Should Combine SEO and PPC in 2015

Two of the most effective and popular online marketing strategies are search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click advertising (PPC). While many business make the unfortunate mistake of perceiving these approaches as mutually exclusive, the reality is that these strategies are most profitable when they are pursued simultaneously. Here are 4 of the most essential reasons why it’s important for your business to appreciate the interdependence, and combine SEO and PPC campaigns:

1. Time Considerations

While organic SEO is known to be an effective and sustainable marketing strategy, one of the major downsides of the technique is that it takes time to see results. It may take several months or longer for your business to reap the fruits of your SEO efforts, and many small and medium sized businesses are under pressure to see a faster ROI. In this regard, when you combine SEO and PPC and the same time, you’re using an excellent strategy while you are waiting for search engine rankings to reflect your SEO efforts, since the effects of a PPC campaign are immediate. The instant benefits of your PPC campaign will allow your business to be more patient when it comes to SEO, ensuring that you don’t feel compelled to take costly shortcuts.

2. Using PPC to Tweak SEO

SEO is a strategy that will be most effective when you are targeting the optimal keywords for your business. Since it can take months to assess the results of an SEO campaign, your business can use PPC as a technique for receiving immediate feedback about which keywords are most profitable for your company. Once you have this information, you’ll be able to adapt your SEO efforts accordingly, ensuring that your efforts will pay off long-term to the greatest extent possible. Without running a PPC campaign alongside your SEO strategies, you may spend months targeting keywords that will only lead to lackluster results. For the most pinpointed SEO, there will be nothing more insightful than analyzing the results of a PPC campaign.

3. Combine SEO and PPC

The optimal online marketing technique for your business depends on your present needs. Until your SEO picks up, it can be helpful to pursue PPC as a medium to gauge the initial profitability of your business. Meanwhile, you should be working on developing a SEO campaign that will be more sustainable in the long term, so that eventually your business will reach a point where it can meet all of its traffic needs from organic searches. Ultimately, this approach will enable you to see fast results while laying the groundwork for sustainable growth.

4. Building Credibility

Testing keywords via PPC can be useful for receiving immediate results, but your marketing campaign will be even more effective if you’re also pursuing organic SEO independently. This is because your business will gain credibility in the eyes of prospective clients when you rank in both organic and sponsored search results. In this respect, both SEO and PPC feed off of each other and allow your business to reap the full potential of both strategies.