Semalt: Combining SEO And SEA For Optimal Results
Are you curious whether you can better focus on SEO or SEA? Why not combine them?
With SEO you work on your organic findability and with SEA you are always at the top of Google with ads. The two complement each other very well when it comes to data, costs and time.
Combining SEO and SEA is nothing new. The term Search Engine Marketing (SEM) includes both channels to rank on Google. Together they ensure that you are more easily found on Google and that your website appears more often in the search results.
Are you curious about what the combination of SEO and SEA can yield for your website? Then read on quickly to find your answer.
What is the difference between SEO and SEA?
Before we explain how and why to combine SEO and SEA, let's first explain the differences.
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. With the help of SEO, you improve the organic findability of your website in the results of a search engine.
SEA stands for Search Engine Advertising. With the help of SEA, you improve the findability of your search engine advertisements. Ads are above the organic search results, but you have to pay to appear here.
The organic ranking of websites is determined by an algorithm that shows the best results for a particular keyword.
Ads are ranked based on Quality Score. The Costs Per Click (CPC) you specify is also included in this quality score.
Why combine SEO and SEA?
Both SEO and SEA provide data that you can use to optimize your website. What many people don't know, however, is that you can exchange the data with each other to improve your overall SEM.
Combining SEO and SEA ultimately ensures that you can save advertising costs and rank on Google in both the short and long term.
Combining SEO and SEA provides several benefits:
- Ads drive results in the short term until organic ranking takes over.
- You can get keywords from your SEA campaigns that you can use for SEO.
- From your organic results, you can extract keywords that you can use for your ads.
- You can reduce advertising costs by optimizing your landing pages with SEO.
- By combining SEO and SEA, you can appeal to different target groups.
The effect of SEA on SEO
To rank in Google's organic results, you have to spend quite a bit of time creating and optimizing content. It can take up to six months before Google picks up your website and includes it in the search results.
With SEA you have much faster results. You can rank in Google from the moment you set an advertising budget and put your ad live.
Combining SEO and SEA ensures that you have fast results so that you can generate income. It gives you the time and budget to keep working on your long-term results through SEO.
SEA provides quick insight into the quality and relevance of your pages. You can use these insights to optimize your pages for SEO. So you don't have to wait months to find out which optimizations you can make for SEO to rank higher.
Finally, combining SEO and SEA can be incredibly powerful when you rank organically. A Google user can then find your website several times in the search results, which instils more confidence.
Defining SEO strategy based on SEA campaigns
Keywords are the most important part when it comes to SEO and SEA. They are important to SEA because you need to research which keywords are showing ads and what the cost is.
For SEO, it can take a long time before you rank for a keyword. Before you put in time and effort, you want to make sure that you are targeting the right keyword.
A SEA campaign can give you a lot of insight into the potential of a keyword. You can see the number of impressions, the Click Through Rate (CTR) and the conversion rate.
You can combine SEO and SEA by using your current SEA campaigns to find good keywords for SEO. For example, check which keyword is searched for most often or which has the highest conversion rate.
Another strategy is to run short SEA campaigns for some related keywords to see which performs best. You can then target the best-performing keyword with SEO.
So, a good tactic is to incorporate the best keywords from your SEA campaigns into your SEO strategy. You know for these keywords that they are searched for and that they have the potential to deliver your conversions.
Discovering new keywords for SEO with SEA
In line with the point mentioned above, you can also discover completely new keywords for SEO with the help of an SEA campaign. This makes combining SEO and SEA even more profitable.
When you set up an SEA campaign in Google AdWords, you can choose from three different search types:
- Broad search. Your ads may appear for related searches.
- Search by phrase. Your ads may show for phrases that contain the keyword.
- Exact search. Your ads will only show for search terms with the same meaning or intent as the keyword you entered.
Setting up a broad match SEA campaign ensures that your ad is shown for a lot of relevant search terms. Over time, you can see exactly how often your ad has been shown for which search terms and how often your website has been clicked through.
Based on this data, you can determine which keyword you can best target for SEO. Choose the keyword that is searched for most often or has the highest CTR. Of course, make sure that the keyword is relevant and thus fits the product or service you are selling and matches the search intent of users.
Extend SEA campaigns with data from Google Search Console
We have now shown that it is possible to combine SEO and SEA using SEA data. However, you can also use SEO data to optimize your SEA.
Google Search Console is a powerful tool from Google that offers a lot of insight into the organic presence of your website. Per page, you can see exactly through which keywords your website is found. GSC provides the following data for each keyword:
- Number of impressions
- Number of clicks to your website
- CTR
You may rank low in organic results for a keyword that has a lot of impressions. You can use this keyword in an SEA campaign to reach the top of the search results with the help of advertisements.
You can combine SEO and SEA to bet on the right keywords for your ads and reach a larger audience.
In addition to the insights per page, it is also possible to export all data from your website to Google Sheets. The overview shows all organic keywords per page and you can use this to optimize your current SEA campaigns:
- Check for key search terms for pages that you haven't already included in your SEA campaign.
- Create a new ad group for a page that isn't running ads yet. With the overview, you know exactly which search terms are relevant.
- Check whether your ads for certain search terms are landing on the correct landing page.
Increase the Quality Score of your ads with SEO
The fact that you pay for ads in Google does not mean that they always appear in the search results. It's a competitive market and you need to optimize your ads as best you can to get maximum return.
Whether or not your ad appears in Google depends on its Quality Score. The Quality Score is determined based on the following points:
- Keyword. Ads must be shown for the keyword and this is not the case for all keywords.
- Quality. The title and description of the ad must match the keyword and search intent.
- CPC. The costs you pay for a click to your website.
- Landing page. The quality of the page the visitor lands on after a click from the ad. The landing page must be of quality and match the ad.
The higher your ad's Quality Score, the more often it appears. You can combine SEO and SEA to increase the Quality Score of your ads.
You can optimize your landing page with the help of SEO to make it more relevant and thus increase the Quality Score.
First of all, check whether the landing page has the right intention. Do visitors find what they are looking for when they click on your ad?
Next, perform keyword research for the page in question. To do this, use the Dedicated SEO Dashboard which is a powerful tool developed by Semalt experts. This tool offers a lot of important information about each keyword. This allows you to save time and get good results with the chosen keywords.
For the relevant search terms, check if you can add information to the landing page to improve the quality.
A higher quality score for your landing page means you can bet lower on your CPC to get the same results. By combining SEO and SEA you achieve lower advertising costs.
Better SEO means cheaper SEA
Improving your landing page's SEO isn't the only way to save on advertising costs.
The higher you rank organically, the less you need to advertise. After all, you are already at the top of the search results and in this way you can limit the advertising budget.
In the beginning, you may want to set more advertising budgets so that your website has time to rank organically. The moment organic ranking ensures visitors and conversions, you can reduce the advertising budget further and further.
For the best results, it is good to always combine SEO and SEA. By reducing the advertising budget for keywords that you rank for organically, you can bet on other keywords for SEA. This way you will be found on Google for an increasing range of keywords.
Betting broadly on different keywords
You can bet broadly on different keywords for both SEO and SEA. SEO allows you to include some relevant keywords on your pages. SEA allows you to create ad groups that target various related keywords.
However, the keywords you use for SEO and SEA will be different. For SEO, it is important to pay attention to the possibility of ranking organically. For SEA, the search intent and search volume are more important.
By combining SEO and SEA you can therefore bet very broadly on keywords. With the help of SEA, you can attract visitors to pages that do not rank for organic keywords. Your website will be found by more users in this way.
All control with SEA, Google decides with SEO
There is a difference in the preview on Google when it comes to SEO and SEA.
With SEA, you have complete control and freedom when it comes to advertising texts. You determine the title and description yourself and these will be shown in the search results.
For SEO, you can also specify the meta title and meta description yourself, but Google will not always comply with this. In most cases, Google will put together a meta description with relevant information from your article that matches the keyword the user has typed.
The advantage of SEA is that you can sell better because you have better control over what information is shown on Google. You can capitalize on Unique Selling Points (USP) to promote your products or services.
If you need to learn more about the subject of SEO and website promotion, we invite you to visit our Semalt blog.