How to Reduce PPC Spend With SEO
PPC advertising and SEO don’t often cross paths for many businesses. If this is the case for your business, then there’s money to be saved.
When we work with marketing teams they’re often surprised by how well an SEO strategy works with paid advertising. Here’s how we reduce PPC spend with SEO.
How to Reduce PPC Spend with SEO
Here are some effective SEO and PPC strategies to kickstart reducing PPC spending with SEO. We’ve used these in our Sydney SEO agency when we work with paid advertising teams.
1. Rank Organically for High CPC Keywords
You can greatly reduce your PPC expenses by ranking organically for high CPC keywords through strategic SEO strategies. Start by analysing keyword data in your Google Ads account to see which targeted keywords are driving up your PPC costs. For example, if you have a financial website and ‘investing without broker fees’ has a high CPC, develop content like how-to guides to attract organic traffic.
Create detailed blog posts, engaging FAQs, and optimised landing pages centred around these costly keywords. This approach not only diminishes your need to bid high for search terms but also means you can rank organically in search engines.
2. SEO Improves Quality Score
Improving the SEO of your landing pages not only boosts your site’s organic search rankings but also enhances your PPC campaigns by increasing Quality Scores and lowering costs.
Consider a B2B company targeting ‘enterprise data solutions’ with PPC. Initially, their generic landing pages resulted in a low Quality Score. By revising these pages to incorporate specific information, including relevant key phrases, detailed product info, customer testimonials, and case studies, they markedly improved relevance.
This alignment between the PPC ads and the landing page content raised the Quality Score from 6 to 9. Therefore reducing the CPC by 20% and enhancing the overall ROI of their ad spend. You’ll see similar benefits by tailoring your SEO efforts to your PPC strategy.
3. Use SEO for Remarketing
By improving your search engine optimisation you’re climbing the search engine rankings and attracting more visitors naturally. These visitors, who land on your page through organic search can become part of your remarketing audience. Unlike primarily ad-driven strategies, this method builds your audience without constant financial input.
Once they’ve visited your site, you can effectively target them with remarketing campaigns. This approach not only fills your funnel with interested prospects but does so in a cost-efficient way. You’re basically re-engaging a warm audience that’s already familiar with your brand, making your PPC spending much more effective and less costly.
4. Local SEO is Cheaper
Utilising local SEO strategies can reduce your PPC expenses by placing your business in regional organic search results. By optimising your Google My Business profile, integrating local keywords into your content and ad copy, and generating local backlinks, you’ll notably improve your performance in specific geographical areas.
This not only cuts down on broader PPC campaigns but also attracts more relevant traffic. For example, a franchise revamped its digital marketing strategy to focus on local search terms. They updated their Google My Business listing, created location-specific landing pages with local-oriented keywords, and reached out for backlinks from local blogs. This resulted in top local search rankings and a reduction in PPC spend.
5. Enhance User Experience
Improving your website’s user experience can reduce your PPC spending by better giving consumers what they want.
Consider an e-commerce site struggling with high bounce rates on PPC landing pages targeting ‘professional digital cameras.’ Performance increases can be seen by overhauling these pages to improve navigation ease and load speeds, adding top-quality images, and clarifying calls to action.
Also make sure that the page serves the user-intent as much as possible. If PPC ads are showing for search queries that aren’t relevant to the page, add them as negative keywords. These changes not only enhance the mobile experience but also lower bounce rates and increase time on site.
Google then recognises this heightened user engagement, improving your Quality Score, which lowers CPC and boosts ad visibility. By upgrading user experience, you’re not just saving on Google ads but also building more inviting and efficient web pages.
Frequently Asked Questions
How to Reduce PPC Spend?
To cut your PPC costs, assess your campaigns for non-performing keywords, refine your targeting, and improve your ad quality scores. You’ll get better results and spend less on ineffective paid ads.
How to Use PPC and SEO Together?
To use PPC and SEO together, you’ll optimise your site and ads to target similar keywords, enhancing quality scores and improving conversion rates. This strategy leads to better overall results and more efficient spending.
How Does SEO Affect PPC?
SEO affects PPC by enhancing your site’s visibility organically, which can decrease your reliance on your paid search ads and potentially lower your cost-per-click rates as your organic search strength improves.
Is SEO More Cost Effective Than PPC?
Yes, SEO is generally more cost-effective than PPC because you’re not paying for each click. Instead, you invest in improving your site, which brings sustained traffic without ongoing costs.
Matthew Barby, Senior Director of Acquisition at HubSpot
"Whenever I have companies ask me if there are any great agencies in Australia, I always point them to Prosperity Media. James and team are always pushing out incredibly impactful work, and their depth of knowledge around SEO and content marketing is up there with the best in the world."