Paid search and SEO (short for search engine optimization) are two sides of the same coin. Paid search targets those who search for keywords related to your business through ads on the search engine results page (SERP). SEO, on the other hand, ensures that your website, content and social profiles are prepared to rank well in organic search results. Content is the king of on-page SEO, which includes elements such as page titles, headline tags, meta descriptions, and the page URL.
Before you develop content around certain keywords, topics, etc., it's a good idea to test them with paid search first. This way, you can get an idea of how well they convert without wasting a lot of time waiting for SEO results. With paid search, you can get a similar number of visitors as organic search, but it requires a much larger budget. That's why it's important to combine and leverage organic and paid search efforts into one.
Especially since SEO changes can take days, sometimes months, to appear effectively in search results. Once your SEO program starts to gain traction, you'll see an increase not only in organic rankings, but also in website traffic. However, brands can use SEO to appear in additional areas of a results page with rich snippets, the local map package, and the Knowledge Graph. Where you can make SEO and PPC work together, you'll often be able to generate results that are greater than their components.
When it's time to add new search terms to your campaign, testing them with SEO tactics can take a lot of time and work (such as writing new content and regularly updating existing posts). This intelligence can be entered directly into organic search marketing (SEO) and can inform all other ads to improve overall results. To get the most visibility and traffic for your website, it's wise to invest in both PPC and SEO and make sure both strategies work together. For brands trying to communicate information, perhaps for a political campaign or a non-profit mission, SEO will be incredibly useful.
The first is that paid ads appear at the top of the page, above organic listings influenced by SEO.
