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3 Tactics to Unite SEO & SEM for Better Results

By Snap Agency September 25, 2013

SEO and SEM are often mistaken for mutually exclusive strategies. Many companies and agencies have separate people or departments that manage these two, seemingly independent, strategies. While they each have their tactics that may make it easier to operate them separately, it’s important to understand how one can help the other. Make the sum of your SEM and SEO strategy greater than its parts with these tactics.

Refine Your Message with PPC Ads

Your messaging is an important aspect of both your SEO and SEM landing pages. It not only conveys important information about your brand, but it also serves to convert visitors once they’ve hit the web page. You most likely want them to take some action; make a purchase, fill out a contact form, download a whitepaper, etc. The way in which you instruct them will have an impact on your conversion rate.

How can you test which messaging is most effective? By taking a hint from your PPC campaign. You’re most likely running multiple ads with varying ad copy. Which one has the highest conversion rate? The messaging has an influence on clicks, so take time to understand what it is about the higher converting ads that makes them more successful by this metric.

Create Backlinks with Targeted Social Ads

Backlinks continue to be an important aspect of SEO. However, it’s more important than ever to attract inbound links from quality sources. The best way to do so is to target your organic content at people that are actually interested in the subject matter. With many social ads, such as Facebook’s sponsored stories, you can configure them to target a specific audience. When your ads display for social users who are in your target demographic and have a preexisting interest in the topic, there is an increased likelihood of attracting backlinks.

Improve Quality Score through SEO

An important metric of your PPC campaign is the quality scores of your landing pages. A higher quality score equates with consistently higher ad placement and lower cost-per-click (CPC). By applying the principles of a good SEO strategy to your SEM landing pages, you can increase the relevancy and, therefore, quality scores of your web pages. Optimize these pages with unique content and targeted keywords to increase the effectiveness of your PPC campaign.

Make sure your SEO and SEM teams collaborate to create a better digital marketing strategy as a whole. If you outsource this work to an internet marketing company, be sure to ask them how your SEO and SEM strategies are working together!