Paid ad campaigns are a great way to get your business in front of new customers. However, the effectiveness of paid ads can be improved significantly by developing content marketing and SEO campaigns that focus on improving the user experience and the quality of information on your website.

Today’s post aims to answer” how does SEO affect PPC?” by exploring 5 scenarios where SEO will help improve PPC performance.

Before We Jump In… Let’s Talk Content & SEO

In case you’re not familiar with content marketing and SEO, it involves adding high-value and relevant content to your website and refreshing old content to improve its performance. If you want more people to find your business on Google or other search engines, then investing in content marketing is a must.

It’s easy to see how SEO affects PPC when you consider that both are concerned with driving relevant traffic to your website and increasing online sales. But not many people know the impact a great SEO strategy can have on a paid ads campaign and that you don’t need to choose between SEO vs PPC to be successful online

With that in mind, here are five ways SEO affects paid ads performance.

1. Organic SEO Can Improve Conversion Rates

For eCommerce sites, in particular, hiring an SEO to work on your product pages can dramatically impact the ROI from your paid ad campaigns.

The reason for this is because an SEO can align your product titles, descriptions, images and more with in-depth keyword research to not only make sure your products rank in the SERPs but also ensure your products are showing more often and for more relevant searches on platforms like Google Ads and Google Shopping.

We recently implemented this strategy for an eCommerce retailer with over 2,500 products. After updating all their product pages with SEO optimised content, we saw the conversion rate increase from 0.94% to 1.55% in 6 months.

2. Organic SEO Builds Your Remarketing Audience

Are you running remarketing ads? If so, you’re relying on people to visit your website to build that remarketing audience in the first place. For businesses that are only using Paid Ads to drive traffic, that remarketing list will be an expensive one to keep topped up.

Implementing a content marketing campaign that focuses on SEO will bring in thousands of organic visits from potential customers you know are interested in your products or services.

These potential customers are then added to your remarketing list, giving you a much more cost-effective way to reach and re-engage potential customers.

We used this tactic for garden retailer WM James and generated +15,000 visits and a 269% YOY increase in online sales.

3. Organic SEO Helps To Drive Higher Lifetime Value

The cost of acquiring a customer through paid ads can be high, so you need to ensure that the lifetime value of that customer vastly outweighs the cost of acquiring them.

Having an organic SEO strategy in place means you bring people into your sales funnel cost-effectively and give them more time with your brand to learn about what you do, who you are, and how you can help.

Ultimately, building trust in these early stages with great content gives them a reason to keep coming back – even after buying. This is a great example of how SEO affects PPC.

By increasing the number of organic and paid touchpoints, you can reduce cost per acquisition and increase LTV by creating more content that targets the post-sale stage.

4. Organic SEO Can Reduce Cost Per Click (CPC)

If you’re paying to advertise on Google Ads, it can be a massive benefit if your product pages show up in the top positions for relevant keywords.

As we mentioned earlier, aligning and optimising your website content with those search terms will help rank your page and help increase your visibility, click-through rates, and conversion rates.

What does all of this mean and how does SEO affect PPC here? Well, you’ll reduce your CPC on paid ads and get more for your current spend while getting the same (if not better) visibility for your business!

We’ve seen this tactic work time and time again. By optimising the content on your landing page or product page, you’ll get a higher ad rank and relevancy score, leading to a lower CPC.

5. Content Marketing Directly Drives Leads From PPC

Content marketing isn’t all about SEO. Digital content exists in many forms, including videos, articles, infographics and, of course, eBooks and downloads. Re-purposing content for your blog can help to build your multimedia library.

If you’re running paid ads, it’s essential to have a compelling offer and a clear call to action. A great way to do this is by creating a high-value eBook around the benefits of your products or services that people can download to access – thus becoming a lead.

This is an excellent example of how paid ads and content marketing can be used together effectively and why they should not exist as independent channels with their own strategies.

Summary: How Does SEO Affect PPC? A Lot!

Content Marketing and SEO is essential if you want to build sustainable, long-term customer relationships.

By focusing on both, you can increase your brand awareness and visibility, reach more customers and increase meaningful conversions on your website – like sign-ups and sales.

To speak with an expert about integrating content marketing and SEO into your marketing and paid ads strategy book a strategy call with a member of our team.