TL;DR:
- To the question of where SEO & PPC are headed, I think they are already in the process of merging in a way that will eventually make “doing” them synonymous or at the very least tightly linked.
- I also do believe in the 1+1=3 concept. In fact I think it’s greater than just PPC/SEO. I think that if there’s a spot on google available you should take it so you fully cover the page as much as possible. Full Coverage SEO we should trademark that…
- Full Coverage SEO™….done!
Hey there, this week is gonna be fast. It’s a topic I’ve been pondering for a while now.
Where is SEO and PPC headed and could 1+1=3? That’s a question posed frequently by people who do both SEO and PPC wondering if the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Ok for the non-skimmers…I don’t mean that Google is going to give some favoritism to someone who runs ads. I mean that many of the aspects that it takes to get better results in each field are increasingly similar.
It used to be that PPC was quality score driven and then a manager had to continually refine negative keyword lists until it was finely tuned. Google’s been systematically dismantling that for the last two years with changes to match types and how negative keywords work.
SEO is increasingly focused now on “experience” which was customarily thought to be more of the kind of thing you considered for quality scores in PPC.
I think it’s already the case now (in my opinion) that PPC does better (generally) when traffic is run to well-optimized website pages (from an SEO perspective).
My working hypothesis is that Google cares most about customer experience. If that’s the case, to them traffic is traffic. Why would they make a distinction between a searcher who clicks an ad or a website link?
My evidence for this hypothesis would take too long to detail out in this email but I’ve seen a lot of reasons to think this is the direction Google is headed including the core vitals update recently and much of the developments on the PPC side with AI.
I really think you’ll see in the next 2 years a blurring of the line between the two disciplines to where doing one well, will require doing the other well.
As to Full Coverage SEO I think that if you look at traditional advertising many believe that being top of mind is what wins. Therefore they optimize for impression share.
Wouldn’t it logically follow that if someone is undecided and searching (as evidenced by a keyword search and not a branded search) that Page Impression Share would matter too? I just made that term up just now. I’m trademarking that too. Page Impression Share™ <—-first in use!
Meaning this. Let’s say someone has seen your ads. They know your brand. Then one day they actually need you, and they search for the thing they need, not your brand.
Let’s pick a random keyword out of the air like…ohh Personal Injury Lawyer [City].
If they see you in the LSA’s and PPC and the Map Box and the Organic…doesn’t it stand to reason that there’s going to be a multiplication effect vs anyone, or just a plurality of those choices?
Based on this article, and my own experience for the last 10 years in this industry I tend to think that’s the case.
For further reading on the synergy, concept check out this article. Makes ya think https://www.searchenginejournal.com/paid-search-incrementality/397279
