Leveraging PPC and Paid Social to Complement Your Organic SEO

Here at Artemis Marketing, we’d be the first to tell you how important SEO is and why having a robust strategy is crucial for helping you drive qualified traffic and leads to your website.

However, putting aside what our clients have said about the benefits of SEO, you may be wondering whether organic SEO strategies alone are enough to maximise your visibility and conversions in an increasingly competitive digital space and one that’s experiencing constant fluctuations and disruption due to AI.

Often, you need to take advantage of several other marketing channels to bolster your SEO efforts, particularly if you are trying to scale and grow like many of our clients have (and still are).

This is where paid advertising channels like pay-per-click (PPC) and paid social media ads can prove highly beneficial as complementary strategies.

Used strategically in unison with SEO, PPC and social media ads can deliver tremendous value, from amplifying brand awareness to generating more revenue. Here’s a closer look at how these paid tactics can complement your core organic SEO efforts for greater success.

Expanding Your Search Visibility

One of the biggest advantages of combining SEO with PPC and social media advertising is being able to increase visibility across both organic and paid search results.

While SEO focuses solely on earning high rankings in organic listings, PPC and social media ads enable you to target keywords and audiences beyond your current organic reach.

For example, with PPC advertising, you can bid on relevant branded and non-branded keywords that may be more competitive or out of reach organically. This expands the number of relevant searches where your brand appears in SERP positions that sit above or alongside organic rankings. PPC ads also allow you to tailor messaging to different keywords and target audiences in a more ‘granular’ fashion.

Similarly, social media advertising campaigns on platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok and Instagram let you target users based on very specific demographics, interests, behaviours and characteristics. When done effectively, you can raise awareness about your brand among the most niche audiences, including those who may not yet be searching for your offerings. In turn, this will allow you to appear in front of the right types of customers actively or passively.

Driving More Qualified Traffic

Populating both organic and paid results for core keyword terms provides more touchpoints to attract prospective customers.

Those who see your brand across multiple channels (perhaps through a mixture of organic search, third-party links and in-feed social media ads) are also more likely to recognise and engage with it. Familiarity is crucial for awareness and, eventually, remarketing.

This multi-channel presence builds trust and credibility for your brand. It also gives you more opportunities to reach audiences that are actively looking for your products or services. The end result is higher qualified traffic to your site and steadier streams of leads and sales. With a website that offers a seamless user experience and provides your prospects with plenty of useful, engaging information that adds value to your brand, you’re onto a winner.

For example, someone searching for “car insurance” may skip past the top organic listings but click your paid ad listing. Or a targeted Facebook ad could influence a user who wasn’t actively searching to visit your site. Casting a wider net across channels identifies and captures more of your target customers.

Enhancing Brand Awareness

While SEO brings in traffic from people searching for your brand and products, or from those who are looking for answers to prominent industry questions, SEO is a constantly evolving strategy in which audiences are more malleable.

This is where paid social media promotions can be invaluable for raising brand awareness for specific audience groups. Various social media platforms give you access to untapped, targeted audiences at scale. From then, you can create static or dynamic ads to get your brand and message in front of people who may not know about you yet through organic means.

Ad campaigns can promote brand awareness and shape perception by highlighting your value proposition, achievements, testimonials, credentials, accreditation, events and more. Amplifying reach and visibility beyond just search establishes wider brand recognition.

Maximising ROI (Return on Investment)

When coordinated effectively, SEO, PPC and paid social together provide an ROI greater than the sum of their parts. Over time, refining messaging, offers, and calls-to-action (CTAs) across channels can be instrumental in driving conversions through your website.

With SEO, you can focus on ranking pages and content that target high-intent keywords where visitors are more likely to convert. PPC and social ads can then generate brand awareness and steer qualified traffic to those conversion-optimised landing pages.

You can also tailor ads with special CTAs and promotions, such as discounts or free trials exclusive to ad clicks. Retargeting ads remind previous visitors about limited-time offers to capture more customers. This multi-touch attribution ultimately results in a higher return on ad spend.

Integrating SEO, PPC and Social

All three of these marketing channels require alignment and methodical strategising from the off. While on the surface it makes sense to entrust somebody to oversee all of the channels simultaneously, unfortunately, the intricacies, obstacles, and evolving nature of these channels mean that this is incredibly difficult to do day-to-day.

Companies have to invest properly in each channel, rather than leaving all three in the hands of someone already working on the business itself, not to mention providing services to customers.

Therefore, to ensure you get the most out of an omnichannel marketing strategy, make sure that you:

• Align your PPC and social campaigns with SEO-optimised content.
• Send traffic to relevant product or service pages or guides instead of just your homepage.
• Coordinate messaging across channels with custom CTAs for each platform.
• Assess analytics data to identify new touchpoints, optimise the customer journey, and assess what isn’t working.
• Set up tracking links, UTM codes, and pixels to monitor cross-channel conversions.
• Keep your website patched and fast-loading, with seamless mobile optimisation and user experience.
• Create unique landing pages for paid ads rather than sending all traffic to your homepage.
• Test, analyse and refine campaigns regularly to improve results over time.

An Integrated Strategy for Search Success

In today’s digital ecosystem, focusing solely on organic SEO sometimes just isn’t enough. It can and often is for startups or scaling local businesses, but those that want to expand and grow at scale may need the support of additional channels.

Combining SEO strategically with paid search and social media marketing can impact visibility, traffic, conversions and overall ROI exponentially.

At Artemis, our approach to SEO is adaptable for you so that you actually see positive results in real time. We have worked with numerous brands over the years, developing bespoke SEO campaigns that are supported by paid channels to maximise their brand reach and presence. 

To learn more about driving results through an integrated search and paid ad strategy for your business, contact our team today.