What Are the Benefits of Combining Organic and Paid Search?

We break down the benefits of combining organic and paid search together to increase traffic and conversions on your website.

What is organic search?

Organic search is the act of someone using a search engine such as Google to find relevant information on their chosen search term. Google’s algorithm determines the user’s search intent (the reason for them conducting this search) to find the best web page that answers the query.

Why is organic search important to your website?

Every page within your website has the potential to be indexed and ranked within the search engine results pages (SERPs). In which position the page is indexed will depend on the search query and how relevant your content is deemed by the search engine (and how well it answers the user’s query).

The more relevant the content is deemed (and the more successfully it answers the query), the higher the position your page will rank within the SERPs.

How to improve a web page’s search engine result page position

Firstly, you need to establish the focus keyword or phrase that you want the page to be indexed for. Does your content answer the question? Are you seen as an authority on this topic? If the answer to either of these questions is no, then you may need to re-evaluate the content.

A good starting place is to conduct competitor research. Looking at the search engine results pages for the keyword or phrase you wish to rank for and reviewing what competitor content is ranking well will help you determine any adjustments you could make to your content in order to improve its ranking.

Explore what type of content is ranking well. It is a blog post? A top 10 list? Or an in-depth product review? Once you have determined what type of content is ranking well, you can review your own content and amend accordingly, to increase the potential of your page increasing in ranking.

Is your poor ranking due to a competitive keyword or industry?

What if you’ve done all the right things and created an insightful article which answers the search query perfectly, but your web page is still not ranking as high as you would have hoped? This is an unfortunate but common situation. If you are competing for SERP prime real estate against leaders or well-known brands in your industry, you may be fighting a losing battle to increase your position.

It’s not all doom and gloom, though – with keyword research, you should be able to identify similar keyword terms that have similar intent but are less competitive. Once you have identified opportunities for similar keywords, you can revise your content to be more relevant to this new keyword or phrase.

Not getting results quickly enough?

Organic search engine optimisation is a long and time-consuming strategy. It could take months before you see improvements in rankings. If you have launched a new product or website, but it’s going to take months before you begin to see a good volume of traffic to the site, this is not going to help with conversions or sales. This is where paid search advertising can be used effectively to increase visibility in SERPs.

What is paid search?

Paid search is the act of paying for advertising within the SERPs. How much you pay for a particular advert will depend on the competition and the cost determined by the search engine. Google Ads is one of the main tools used for paid search campaigns and paid adverts will appear across the Google SERPs and partner networks.

You may have heard paid search as being referred to as pay per click (PPC). One of the advantages of paid search is that you only pay each time a user clicks on your advert.

How does paid search increase traffic to your website?

As paid ads generally appear at the top of the SERPs, there is a higher probability of a user clicking on your advert than on the organic results. Paid search is competitive, as you will still be up against other competitors, but it’s not as competitive as organic search.

How does Google Ads determine which position a paid ad appears in?

Similar to organic ranking, Google Ads uses an algorithm to determine the ad quality score and therefore its position. Factors that are taken into consideration are:

• The maximum bid the advertiser is willing to pay (maximum cost per click)
• The quality of the ad
• The context of the query
• The competitiveness of the auction

Is paid search expensive?

There is a cost associated with running a paid ads campaign. Thankfully, you set a limit for how much you are willing to spend each month and can adjust it as required. The higher the budget, the higher the likelihood of increasing traffic to your website.

What are the benefits of investing in both SEO and PPC together?

Kick-starting a new website with a PPC campaign gives Google a chance to evaluate user behaviour, regardless of the source. If the content is engaging, your site will rise in organic rank for the successful search query term used to stimulate the PPC clicks, and organic traffic should exceed PPC traffic over time.

A robust SEO (search engine optimisation) strategy paired with PPC advertising will improve your search engine rankings, drive traffic to your website, and help to increase conversions.

Why should I use b4b for organic and paid search?

Within the b4b team, we have dedicated SEO and paid search specialists. They are highly skilled and experienced when it comes to optimising website content for organic and paid search, and can create effective strategies to ensure that your website is performing to the best of its ability. To get started or to have a chat with us about our services, please get in touch today on 01202 684400.